“Spanish society should know that participating in a clinical trial is something beneficial”

Farmaindustria participates in the program ‘Es la Tarde de Dieter’, by EsRadio, in a debate on clinical research in Spain

Source: www.farmaindustria.es

Clinical trials, which are the studies that determine the safety and efficacy of a new drug for authorization, have great value for all agents in the healthcare chain: for patients, who thanks to them can access innovative medicines from early form, which is sometimes the only therapeutic option available; for health professionals, who by virtue of their participation in the trials see their knowledge updated and complement their care work with research activity, and for the laboratories themselves, who need to develop trials, keys to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of new medicines , in a quality environment.

These studies also stimulate the biomedical R & D of the health systems that attract them and generate an important economic flow for hospitals and participating centers, since both innovative medication and all expenses related to diagnosis and treatment are borne by the promoter company, which manages to culminate the efforts made in the preclinical phases and move forward to achieve the authorization of the medicine.

Spain is today one of the countries with the best conditions to host clinical trials, since it has “an excellent National Health System, health professionals with high scientific level and very committed to research and an increasingly active group of patients”, without forgetting the support of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products and a favorable legal framework, as highlighted by Amelia Martín Uranga, responsible for the Plataforma de Medicamentos Innovadores de Farmaindustria.

Martín Uranga, who participated on Tuesday in the program Es la tarde de Dieter, by EsRadio, considered that today “in Spain there is a lot of research and good” due, among other factors, to the success of public-private collaboration formulas. “There is no other way to do it” -he added- if we consider that making a medicine available to patients is very complex (the R & D process takes between 10 and 12 years), costly (more than 2,400 million euros) ) and risky, since only one of every 10,000 molecules that are being investigated has become an authorized medicine.

In the debate, in which the director of the Health Research Institute of the Fundación Jiménez Díaz University Hospital, Carmen Ayuso, also participated, the representative of Farmaindustria pointed out that there are, nevertheless, aspects that can be improved, such as excessive bureaucracy to start up a clinical trial or patient recruitment.

“There are centers that always have 10% of patients who have not recruited, and there we all lose: the patient who does not enter, so that many times that trial is the only therapeutic alternative, and the rest of the agents involved: the researcher, the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products and the industry. We have to get to the maximum number of patients in the trials because that is how we will all win. ”

For this, in the opinion of the representative of Farmaindustria, it is important that patient organizations collaborate and “society knows that participating in a trial is something beneficial”, and also that the authorities are aware of the effort of industry and research teams. public and private centers for making available to patients those medications capable of changing their lives because they are disruptive and capable of modifying the course of the disease; that they are aware, in short, of the social value of the medicine “.

From Distefar we add to the importance of letting patients know that participating in clinical trials is beneficial for them and the whole society.