Conducting Clinical Research

Time to play catch up with the blogging as the year begins to wind down.  The fall term at UC Santa Cruz will finish next week and I have no more conferences booked till January. 

A couple of weeks ago I attended and presented at MAGI West Conference on Clinical Research in San Francisco.  The event was neatly sandwiched in between the end of baseball pennant series' and the World Series, in which my beloved San Francisco Giants prevailed for the first time in, well, my whole life.  San Francisco was a very orange place to be during these days, and as a lifelong baseball fan left heartbroken by my team twice before in my adult life, it was a glorious time to be in the city. 

But this blog is not about baseball.  The MAGI conference was well attended by over 500 people, many more than had attended the same event last year in San Diego (on the last day of the baseball 2009 regular season, in case anyone is keeping track).  MAGI (Model Agreements and Guidelines International) so far is offered on either coast - in the east in spring and the west in the fall - and I think it is rapidly becoming one of the must-attend meetings on the yearly calendar for clinical research professionals, especially as the scope of the conference gradually expands from its origins in contracts and agreements to its current goal of "establishing best practices for clinical research operations, business and regulatory compliance".  The quality of speakers that I heard was uniformly quite high with little variation, although a couple stood out in both directions.  As the conference becomes larger it is also becoming an important networking opportunity and my LinkedIn connections have expanded significantly as a result of the acquaintances I made and renewed during the two days I attended.

One of the people I reconnected with in San Francisco is Dr Judy Stone of Maryland, the author of "Conducting Clinical Research", a newly revised quite complete how-to guide primarily written for investigators and would-be investigators to help them understand their role in the clinical research enterprise, particularly as relates to pharmaceutical industry-sponsored research, which is ultimately for profit.  Dr Stone has done her homework and produced an excellent reference that, while geared toward investigators, also offers new insights to the sponsor and CRO sides of the industry for those who might have a look.  It is always a good idea to remember to see things from the investigator's perspective, and Dr Stone has done this very well.  I plan to recommend this volume to my GCP students as adjunct reading material starting in the next term.

At the conference I was fortunate to participate on a panel entitled "Are Sponsors Re-evaluating Globalization of Clinical Sites?", moderated by Joan Chambers of Centerwatch.  In my next post I will review some of the key points of the discussion with the panel and audience. 

I close this post with the acknowledgement that our world became a great deal poorer last week when our friend Kate Allen died of gastric cancer.  She was 44.  She was a good teammate, colleague and friend, and she left many friends and loved ones behind who will miss her for the rest for our lives.