In 2012, ten biopharmaceutical companies joined forces to launch TransCelerate BioPharma, a non-profit organization aimed at addressing clinical trial inefficiencies (Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 13, 787–788; 2014). Five years on, with 18 companies now signed up, the precompetitive collaborative group has highlighted key progress to date.

With the Comparator Network, TransCelerate set out to address the high cost of purchasing and distributing commercially marketed products for use as comparators in clinical trials. The Comparator Network has now facilitated the purchase of more than US$120 million worth of comparator products, saving members 10–12% per transaction.

With the Placebo and Standard of Care Initiative, TransCelerate wanted to maximize the value of placebo and standard-of-care data from completed clinical trials. By sharing and pooling these data, they hoped to generate better natural histories of disease that could be incorporated into future clinical trial designs. Preliminary results suggest that these data can reduce study time and reduce the number of patients that need to be enrolled into the placebo or standard-of-care arm of a trial, they report.

TransCelerate and its subsidiary BioCelerate also disclosed their plans for the upcoming year, including the launch of a platform to share toxicology and animal control data.