Baltimore, MD
(09/18/08)

Clinical Trials & Surveys Corp. (C-TASC), a clinical trials solutions company, announced today that it has been awarded a fast track Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Research Resources. The grant will provide funding for C-TASC to further develop its clinical trials management system, known as StudyCTMS. StudyCTMS is a proprietary Web-based data management solution that enables investigators at small and medium sized companies to easily develop and manage clinical studies and deliver the accumulated data and metadata (labels, value labels, etc.) in an easy-to-read and FDA-acceptable format.

Execution of the grant will be managed by Co-Principal Investigators Joseph Valeri, MBA, MS and Margaret Frederick, PhD. "Earning the SBIR grant is a significant achievement for C-TASC as it allows us to complete the research and development of StudyCTMS and make the product available sooner," said Bruce Thompson, president of C-TASC. "Once available, this software will offer clinical researchers an affordable solution capable of producing FDA-acceptable results, which will significantly close the gap that exists between the small researcher and the large pharmaceutical company." StudyCTMS is a Web-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that is already capable of managing clinical data and will soon be expanded to assist researchers to manage the entire research lifecycle of developing a treatment or device for public use.

The software can be used for both small and large clinical trials. With this product, C-TASC will enable small research companies to affordably conduct trials in a manner consistent with FDA standards. This will allow these companies to submit their results to the FDA or easily transfer their data to larger companies with sophisticated data management systems. Expediting the data management process should allow more therapies to enter the testing phase and reach the market more quickly. NIH-SBIR awards are designed to stimulate high-tech innovation by providing funding to small businesses to develop their technological abilities into innovative products that will increase the company's profit margin through their commercialization and contribute to the research and development (R&D) mission of NIH. Each year, eleven federal departments and agencies reserve a percentage of their R&D funds for SBIR awards.