Pharma

Which pharma companies are the most transparent with clinical trial data? (Updated)

The Good Pharma Scorecard focused on clinical trial data shared on 19 drugs approved in 2014.

By Stephanie Baum on December 09, 2017

Note: This post has been updated from an earlier version with additional information about the study and a quote from the study’s co-author Michelle Mello, a Stanford University professor of law and of health policy.

A new study co-authored by the founder of Bioethics International, a non-profit dedicated to ethics and transparency in the pharmaceutical sector, determined that Johnson and Johnson and Sanofi/Genzyme earned top marks and were above and beyond other drug developers at sharing clinical trial data. The study was published in BMJ Open —an online, open access journal, which publishes medical research from all disciplines and therapeutic areas.

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Sanofi’s top score this year is a significant improvement over 2015 when the Good Pharma Scorecard was first published. At that time the drug company landed on the bottom end of the chart, having only published 16 percent of its clinical trial data.

The study focused on the 19 drugs approved in 2014, so pharma companies that did not get drugs approved that year, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, were not included in the Good Pharma Scorecard. 

The first edition of the Good Pharma Scorecard came out in 2015. Its goal is to evaluate how well pharma companies are responding to the push for greater transparency from clinical trials and their ability to deliver meaningful improvement in that regard.

The study found that the median proportion of trials conducted in patients with publicly available results rose from 87 percent in 2012 when the first such study was done to 96 percent in 2014.

Other notable findings were that 10 of 19 drugs (53 percent) had at least one undisclosed trial conducted in patients. Six drugs (32 percent) had at least one undisclosed phase II or III trial. At least 2,864 patients participated in trials with undisclosed results.

Michelle Mello, a Stanford University professor of law and of health policy, is another co-author of the report and a member of Bioethics International. She noted some of the progress made in the pharma industry since the first study was published in an interview posted on Stanford University’s website.

We found that companies are taking their legal obligations around clinical trial reporting seriously. There is high compliance with the reporting requirements of the federal FDA Amendments Act. We also found there are some emerging industry leaders that are going further than the law requires in getting patients and doctors the information they need — and there are clear opportunities for other companies to do more.

Jennifer Miller, a bioethicist at New York University and founder of Bioethics International, said the next edition of clinical data sharing league tables will include patient-level data sharing — data which scientific organizations have pushed for inclusion, according to The Scientist. It will also explore reporting transparency for trials associated with unapproved drugs which were only recently required to be reported under the FDAAA.

A table from the study published in BMJ Open showing companies’ overall clinical trial transparency rankings for drugs approved in 2014*

Rank Company Transparency score (%)
#1 Johnson & Johnson/Janssen 100
#1 Sanofi/Genzyme 100
#3 Abbvie 96
#4 Celgene 95
#5 Merck 93
#6 AstraZeneca 91
#7 Roche 90
#8 Novartis 88
#9 Gilead 73
#10 Allergan 63
#11 Valeant 50
Median 91

  • *Based on the average of companies’ scores for (1) the trials-in-patients analysis and (2) FDAAA compliance measure that counted a trial as compliant if it satisfied either interpretation of the reporting requirements.

  • FDAAA, Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act.

Photo: Natali_Mis, Getty Images