“Australia has reinforced its standing as a world-class destination for early phase clinical development”

Avance Clinical, a leading Australian Contract Research Organization (CRO) for biotech firms, and winner of the prestigious Frost & Sullivan 2020 Asia-Pacific CRO Market Leadership Award, has recently partnered with Europe’s leading CRO, Cromos Pharma. The collaboration will allow biotech firms to quickly start their pre-IND early phase studies in Australia, thereafter, expanding to Central/Eastern Europe to access the large patient populations for their Phase II and III studies. In an email interaction with BioSpectrum, Yvonne Lungershausen, CEO, Avance Clinical, Australia spoke about the Australian CRO market, and the impact of COVID-19 crisis.

- Ayesha Siddiqui

As a CRO company, what are your reflections on the COVID-19 situation?

The CRO and biotech sector has been significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical trials around the world have been impacted this year, especially in the USA, which is our main market, where trials have been paused, canceled or delayed. Australia has been recognized globally for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic with strict quarantine systems and advanced contact tracing, resulting in low numbers of cases and deaths. Therefore we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of USA sponsors moving their trials to Australia.

The global disruption presented a number of operational challenges including:

• A need to rapidly pivot to full adoption of eClinical technologies because traditional working practices and methods were no longer practical.

• Initially patient/volunteer participation in clinical trials decreased at some sites because participants were not wanting to attend clinics or hospitals for fear of the virus.

• Some sites in Australia were temporarily closed while they introduced new work practices to protect staff and patients/volunteers.

• COVID-19 studies targeting countries with significant patient populations, rapidly dominated the global sector, resulting in decreased attention, site resources and funding for non-COVID related therapies.

• Employee adaptations to new working environments i.e. working from a home office.

• Conduct of business development activities needed to change as the ability to create new business connections and partnerships via conferences and face to face meetings became no longer possible.