Clinical trials depend on sustained patient participation, yet recruitment shortfalls and early withdrawals remain two of the most common causes of trial delays and failure. Understanding where and why engagement breaks down is a prerequisite for addressing it effectively. By fostering a strong relationship between researchers and patients, patient engagement can help improve enrollment, boost retention rates, improve the accuracy of data collected, and ensure the trial's overall success. Understanding how engagement operates across the trial timeline and where it typically breaks down is essential for sponsors designing precision studies where participant retention and data continuity are directly tied to program outcomes.
Electronic consent, or e-consent, is a method of obtaining informed consent through an electronic system rather than a paper form. It typically incorporates multimedia components such as videos and interactive presentations to explain the risks and benefits of trial participation, supporting different learning styles and improving participant comprehension. E-consent can be conducted in the clinic or remotely, with participants accessing the platform through a website or dedicated application.
Recently, our team was honoured to attend the World Orphan Drug Congress USA in Boston. The event brought together key stakeholders, experts, and industry leaders in the field of orphan drugs and rare diseases, and provided a platform for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and innovation in the pursuit of improved treatments for rare diseases. The Sano team enjoyed the insightful keynote presentations, interactive panel discussions, and valuable networking opportunities.
Clinical trials are the foundation of modern medicine. They determine which treatments reach patients and how those treatments are understood. Yet for much of history, women were excluded from this process entirely. The male body was treated as the default, and findings from male-only studies were assumed to apply to everyone.
As the landscape of healthcare and technology continues to evolve, clinical trials are undergoing significant transformations. In our latest trend report, we delve into the future of clinical trials, highlighting key trends that are revolutionising the research process. From collaboration and transparency to decentralised trials and patient-centred research, these trends hold the promise of a more efficient, inclusive, and patient-centric approach to medical advancements.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a rapidly growing neurodegenerative disorder affecting millions worldwide. As research progresses, we are learning more about the role of genetics in PD development. DNA testing has emerged as a powerful tool for identifying genetic mutations associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's disease.
Clinical trial populations consistently fail to reflect the demographics of the populations most affected by the diseases being studied. This gap is not simply an ethical concern. It is a structural problem that undermines the generalizability of trial results, introduces regulatory risk, and limits the reach of approved therapies.
In precision medicine trials, DNA sequencing is not a background step. It determines eligibility, shapes enrollment pathways, and directly influences the quality of data that sponsors use to make clinical decisions. The lab performing that sequencing becomes a critical dependency across the study. A poor choice introduces risk at multiple points: unreliable variant calls, delayed results that stall enrollment, sample handling failures, or data security gaps that create regulatory exposure.
In genetically stratified trials, patient recruitment is structurally harder than in conventional studies. Eligibility depends not just on clinical diagnosis, but on confirmed biomarker or variant status — a requirement that most traditional recruitment pathways are not designed to handle.
Running clinical trials across the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) means operating within two fundamentally different systems. Regulatory frameworks, healthcare infrastructure, data privacy rules, and cultural expectations around participation all diverge in ways that directly affect how trials are designed, how patients are found, and how engagement is sustained.