Suvoda LLC, a global clinical trial technology company that specializes in complex studies in therapeutic areas like oncology, central nervous system (CNS), and rare disease, announced a new Advanced Drug Optimization feature as part of its latest Interactive Response Technology (IRT) release. This new functionality offers sponsors of clinical drug trials improved drug supply management, delivering cost savings and helping companies to reduce their carbon footprint.

Traditionally, drug supply strategies have relied on static quantities of initial drug shipments and buffers, often leading to excessive orders to ensure enough medication is available during a trial. Buffers, a common tool for ensuring adequate medication supply at sites, create average upper and lower limits for medication stock at all trial sites and automatically trigger medication orders if supplies hit the low limit.

Suvoda's Advanced Drug Optimization feature is an innovative approach that allows drug supply managers to fine-tune their supply strategies by creating "advanced rules" that factor in enrollment variables, such as participant weight, projected screen failure rates, and treatment ratios. The result is more granular and dynamic supply forecasts, which may translate to significant cost savings. Further, by enabling more precise drug optimization, sponsors may cut back on packaging and shipping, which translates to a better carbon footprint score in support of corporate sustainability goals. 

"Suvoda's new enhancement is an example of how we listen to the needs of our customers and deliver tools that help our sponsors and partners," said Lisa Li, director of IRT product management with Suvoda. "We heard from drug supply managers that they were concerned about the impact of drug oversupply across the entire supply chain, including raw materials, manufacturing, storage, shipping, and packing materials. Helping study managers fine-tune supply can maximize trial resources and increase efficiencies."

The Advance Drug Optimization feature aligns with Suvoda's mission to deliver purpose-built e-clinical solutions that give sponsors command over trials with complex drug supply management needs. Examples include trials with patient cohorts featuring large variations that can affect enrollment dosage, such as pediatric trials. Other trial designs that could benefit from this functionality include those involving high-cost drugs, high screen failure rates, and large trials with numerous subjects per site. 

This enhancement also strengthens Suvoda's partnership with N-SIDE, a deep tech company that empowers organizations in the clinical trials industry to make better decisions and optimize the use of critical resources. Together, Suvoda and N-SIDE seamlessly deliver integrated forecasting and supply-chain optimization to help studies reduce drug supply cost and wastage.

"As a Suvoda partner, we are excited about this feature. We've quantified the impact of this advanced functionality on hundreds of trials, and it generally reduces drug needs by more than 10 percent," said Amaury Jeandrain, vice president of strategy, life sciences, for N-SIDE. "Suvoda has always been committed to innovating on drug supply to ensure that its IRT solution continues to give sponsors the greatest amount of visibility and control possible. And, Advanced Drug Optimization gives us more tools to help our joint customers meet their drug supply needs in ways that better support their clinical trial and organizational goals."