France: Top institutions start uploading missing clinical trial results

Several leading French clinical trial sponsors are now uploading missing results onto the European trial registry. France is finally starting to catch up with other European countries in terms of clinical trial transparency.

Eight major French non-profit research institutions uploaded 27 additional results for drug trials between February and November 2021.

The fastest early movers are CHU De Limoges and Unicancer, each of which uploaded 5 results. The country’s largest medical research institution, the AP-HP network of Paris hospitals, uploaded 3 results. In many cases, the process started only recently, and can be expected to significantly accelerate during the coming year.

In the years up to February 2021, the 27 largest non-commercial sponsors in France between them had only uploaded 11 trial results onto the European EudraCT registry. By November 2021, they had added 27 more results.

Overall, French sponsors still have a very long way to go until they reach the transparency levels of their peers in Belgium, Germany and the UK.

However, the latest data show that there is finally positive momentum in a country that has long been a European transparency laggard. In particular, AP-HP’s positive efforts are likely to send a strong signal that norms and expectations have shifted in the French medical research community.

Hundreds of French clinical trials that were completed years ago still remain falsely marked as ‘ongoing’ on the EudraCT registry, indicating that national medicines regulator ANSM has been doing little – or nothing at all – to improve its dismal data management performance.

According to European Union transparency rules, pharma companies and institutions running drug trials are obliged to make their results public on the registry within one year of trial completion.

TranspariMED will prepare a more detailed report on clinical trial reporting in France in the near future and will share its findings with the French media.

Institutions that want to improve their clinical trial reporting can find useful information here.