The need for safe and effective COVID-19 treatments requires the capacity to conduct multinational clinical trials to test and compare existing and new therapies and vaccines. In light of this, the OECD published a Policy Response on 4 August 2020: “Greater harmonisation of clinical trial regulations would help the fight against COVID-19”.
The COVID-19 crisis requires researchers to join forces worldwide to find a cure and a vaccine. Sharing research data is a critical step in this global cooperation effort. ECRIN has launched a Clinical Research Metadata Repository, including COVID-19 data, allowing the discovery of clinical studies and related data objects, for example protocols, information sheets and consent forms, data management plans, statistical analysis plans, case report forms, results, publications descriptive metadata, etc. The Clinical Research Metadata Repository is updated regularly through collection of data from the most important sources of information worldwide, from New Zealand to the Netherlands and from Japan to Lebanon.
Please visit the Clinical Metadata Repository at http://crmdr.org or visit https://ecrin.org/covid-19-taskforce for more information and details on all the services provided by the ECRIN COVID-19 Task Force.
The 'European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP-RD)' has launched an online Support Officer offering, among others, Clinical Study support for clinical investigators preparing clinical studies on rare diseases.
This paper presents the findings of a cross-sectional survey to understand the differences between ethics review systems, and how they could present obstacles for the promotion of international, collaborative trial by non-profit, academic organizations.