The Canadian Clinical Trials Coordinating Centre (CCTCC) has been launched with funding of Can$1,545,000 over three years and a remit to attract more clinical-research investment to Canada.
The Centre is a joint initiative between the federal government’s health-research investment agency, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR); Rx&D, the association for Canada’s research-based pharmaceutical companies; and the merged Association of Canadian Academic Healthcare Organizations/Canadian Healthcare Association (ACAHO/CHA).
It will be housed in the offices of the Health Charities Coalition of Canada in Ottawa. Of the three-year funding for the CCTCC, Can$750,000 comes from the Government of Canada, Can$750,000 from Rx&D and US$45,000 from ACAHO/CHA, plus in-kind contributions from member organisations.
The Government of Canada has appointed Belinda Vandersluis as the CCTCC’s director of implementation.
Vandersluis brings to the job senior-leadership experience in clinical-trial administration, an understanding of the complexities of conducting clinical studies both in Canada and internationally, and longstanding ties to the clinical-research community, the CIHR said.
Reverse decline
The Canadian Clinical Trials Coordinating Centre (CCTCC) was created to help reverse a decline in clinical-trial investment in Canada and to improve the local landscape for clinical research, the Institutes noted.
The CCTCC will do this, in broad terms, by co-ordinating clinical-trial activities and streamlining regulatory processes for companies and researchers.
More specifically, the Centre has a mandate to implement the nine recommendations in To Your Health and Prosperity – An Action Plan to Help Attract More Clinical Trials to Canada.
A final draft of this report, which was prepared by ACAHO, with significant input from Rx&D and the CIHR, on the back of the 2011 Clinical Trials Summit, was published in March 2012.
The report’s nine recommendations were to:
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