Global Survey Highlights Drug Development Challenges and Opportunities

A recent survey of biotech and biopharma leaders highlights key barriers and possibilities drug developers share in accelerating clinical trials.

The PPD™ clinical research business of Thermo Fisher Scientific has conducted a comprehensive survey involving 150 drug developers from around the world. This initiative, now in its third year, is designed to provide a detailed assessment of current drug development practices and shifts within the industry.

This year’s findings reveal a nuanced landscape where rising clinical trial costs, complex protocol designs and patient recruitment issues have emerged as significant challenges. These insights uncover pressing issues facing drug developers and point to a promising horizon of technological and operational advancements that will shape the future of clinical research.

The top reported challenges include:

• For 49% of respondents, rising costs of clinical trials (a new response option in 2024) is the top challenge facing their organization, with 40% citing complex protocol design and difficult patient recruitment as the primary contributing factors. This was noted across both large and small/mid-size organizations.
• Patient recruitment was revealed as the second biggest challenge facing drug developers in 2024, unseated by the rising cost of clinical trials. Large companies are particularly impacted by competition with other trials or sites, especially given low patient numbers for rare diseases and diversity requirements. Small/mid-size companies struggle with identifying the right patients.
• Increasing complexity of clinical trials rounds out the list of the top challenges facing sponsors in 2024, driven by factors such as enrollment of hard-to-find patient populations, compliance with complex regulatory requirements and innovative therapies that require complex protocols. Small/mid-size companies also cite pressure to shorten timelines and the need to capture more data and insights from clinical trials.

Amid these challenges, there are also several notable opportunities that are driving transformation. There is little distinction among which strategies and technologies rise to the top, demonstrating a rich landscape of innovation and opportunity for change and growth. Drug developers may feel pulled in a variety of directions to keep pace, and there is demand for them to do so.

1. Mirroring 2023’s results, more than half (52%) of survey participants consider innovative trial design the top transformational trend.
2. Precision medicine climbed to No. 2 this year, with 51% of respondents citing it as a crucial opportunity for transformation.
3. And artificial intelligence was a close third with 50% of survey respondents reporting it as a notable opportunity for growth innovation. This is followed by leveraging new technology and patient-centricity, which round out the top 5.

Drug developers should invest in resources and partnerships that enable them to overcome these challenges and tap into growing trends. Partnering with a clinical research organization that integrates data, leverages new technology, embraces innovative approaches and accelerates speed to market is key to keeping pace with the evolving drug development landscape.