British Government, Private Industry Cooperate on Drug Development

The United Kingdom’s Department of Health announced in late March the formation of a precedent-setting partnership between the government and the country’s major, research-based pharmaceutical companies. The new agreement provides for joint funding of clinical research in the U.K., which both parties to the agreement say will lead to faster development of new drugs.

“I am delighted that we have reached agreement on this partnership,” Health Minister Lord Phillip Hunt told the press when announcing the formation of the new partnership. “This will enable joint funding of clinical research, including clinical trials that are important to industry, the National Health Service, and most importantly to patients. It is further a positive sign of the government’s willingness to sustain a world-leading pharmaceutical industry in this country. The National Health Service (NHS) benefits both from medicines developed here and from information about them found from clinical trials held here.”

The United Kingdom is the corporate home of several global research-oriented pharmaceutical companies, including Amersham Health, AstraZeneca, Merck, Sharp, and Dohme, and GlaxoSmithKline.

“This new agreement provides an excellent basis for continued cooperation with government on clinical research matters in this country,” said Thomas McKillop, M.D., AstraZeneca’s chief executive.

The partnership announcement comes out of work completed last year by the Pharmaceutical Industry Competitiveness Task Force (PICTF). The PICTF, which was set up by Prime Minister Tony Blair, created a working group on clinical research to review the opportunities and costs associated with the clinical research infrastructure within the United Kingdom’s NHS. The final report of the task force, which was cochaired by Hunt and McKillip, was published March 26 and contains the final research partnership agreement.

The agreement sets parameters for commercial contracts between the NHS and companies for research on developmental drugs. In addition, it enables joint funding of trials that are of a noncommercial nature, but that are important to both industry and the NHS, such as studies into the development of disease or comparisons of classes of medicines that are unlikely to be funded by individual companies.

Hunt characterized the agreement also as an important step forward in lending clarity and transparency to clinical research. The document provides in-depth analysis and guidelines for dealing with trial registration and termination and addresses questions regarding potential or perceived conflicts of interest.

The PICTF report noted the increasing level last year of competition between countries to undertake clinical research for the pharmaceutical industry. The group’s report pointed out issues of timeliness and speed of starting trials and costs and quality of research as factors affecting a particular country’s attractiveness to pharmaceutical companies seeking to produce clinical trial results.

The PICTF Clinical Research Report is posted on the Web at www.doh.gov.uk/pictf. ▪