An alliance of 32 healthcare facilities and medical research institutes was yesterday founded to bolster the nation’s clinical trial capabilities.
Taiwan’s medical techniques are among the best in the world, but its clinical trials lag behind in scale, the Taiwan Alliance of Clinical Trial Centers said.
A “clinical national team” has been set up to improve efficiency and cooperation, the alliance said.
Photo: CNA
Cofounded by Taipei Medical University (TMU) and three affiliated hospitals — TMU Hospital, Shuang Ho Hospital and Wanfang Hospital — and Taichung Veterans General Hospital, the alliance aims to turn Taiwan into the Asia-Pacific region’s clinical trial hub, it said.
Taiwan conducts about 300 to 400 clinical trials a year, which is significantly lower than in South Korea or Australia, which hold more than 1,000 clinical trials per year, alliance preparation convener TMU president Wu Mai-szu (吳麥斯) said.
Clinical trials must be conducted under strict ethics and regulations to ensure the safety and efficacy of medical innovation, he said.
Whether high-quality clinical trials can be conducted across several facilities is an important indicator of a country’s medical quality and regulatory maturity, he added.
The alliance is to prioritize six major tasks, including setting a standard Institutional Review Board (IRB) document and strengthening the collaborative-IRB mechanism, creating a clinical trial contract template, and building a database of research project managers and attending physicians.
They also include establishing a national clinical trial participant enrollment platform, cooperating in cultivating clinical trial experts, and promoting an Asia-Pacific strategic alliance and international multicenter collaborations, he said.
“This is an important milestone,” Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said at the launch in Taipei.
The development of new drugs has accelerated in the past few years, and more treatments are being developed through molecular approaches and genomic research, which might induce different responses depending on ethnicity or region, making local trials important, he said.
Countries are pursuing local clinical trials to facilitate public access to drugs after they hit the market, he said.
As large pharmaceutical companies prefer to hold clinical trials in locations that have faster patient recruitment rates, the alliance can serve as a single point of contact and apply universal standards and procedures across hospitals, increasing enrollment efficiency and attracting more global pharmaceutical companies to conduct their clinical trials in Taiwan, the minister said.
“The alliance is not only beneficial for international cooperation, it can also help improve Taiwan’s development of new drugs, generic drugs or biosimilars drugs, by increasing the speed of [clinical trial] patient enrollment,” he said. “I think it is a triple-win strategy that would benefit the industry, patients and local academic research.”
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
DEFENSE: The US should cancel the US visas or green cards of relatives of KMT and TPP lawmakers who have been blocking the budget, Grant Newsham said A retired US Marine Corps officer has suggested canceling the US green cards and visas of relatives of opposition Taiwanese lawmakers who have been stalling the review of a proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget. The Executive Yuan has proposed the budget for major weapons purchases over eight years, from this year to 2033. However, opposition lawmakers have refused to review the proposal, demanding that President William Lai (賴清德) first appear before the Legislative Yuan to answer questions about the proposed budget. On Thursday last week, 37 bipartisan US lawmakers sent a letter to Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the heads
Two siblings in their 70s were injured yesterday when they opened a parcel and it exploded, police in Yilan said, adding the brother and sister were both in stable condition. The two siblings, surnamed Hung (洪), had received the parcel two days earlier but did not open it until yesterday, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan, police said. Chen Chin-cheng (陳金城), head of the Yilan County Government Police Bureau, said the package bore no postmark or names and was labeled only with the siblings’ address. Citing the findings of a
A New York-based NGO has launched a global initiative to rename the nation’s overseas missions, most of which operate under the name "Taipei," to "Taiwan Representative Office (TRO)," according to a news release. Ming Chiang (江明信), CEO of Hello Taiwan, announced the campaign at a news conference in Berlin on Monday, coinciding with the World Forum held from Monday through Wednesday, the institution stated in the release. Speaking at the event, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Jie (黃捷) said she believed this renaming campaign would enable the international community to see Taiwan
RSS