As the industry scrambles to find the patients it needs outside the U.S., the organizers of the 2010 annual Drug Information Association (DIA) in Washington, D.C. decided to assemble the sort of luminary-packed panel discussions that only the DIA can present. The session on multi-regional trials began with Doug Peddicord, executive director of the Association of Clinical Research Organizations (ACRO), and was followed by two high-level speakers from FDA. Peddicord was able to review a now-familiar litany of data from clinicalrials.gov, the FDA-NIH repository. Peddicord estimated the decline in the numbers of U.S. projects at 5.5 percent annually, Europe’s drop at 6.1 percent. The winners? India, with growth in projects of 45 percent; and Korea, with a 27 percent increase. “If real estate is about location, location, location, clinical research is about numbers, numbers, numbers,” Peddicord said. ACRO is in the process of trying to study whether there is any demonstrably…more...