But make no mistake: War is a huge obstacle to medical research. Russia's invasion of Ukraine—which has forced more than 2.3 million people to flee to nearby countries—is no exception. According to the US Food and Drug Administration’s clinical trials database, there are overwith research sites in Ukraine. Of those, 117 involve interventions related to cancer. Others are for conditions like multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, and Covid-19 infection.
Now the war threatens to cut off the supply of medications and scatter the participants, making their health records harder or impossible to track. In the clinical world, consistency is king; gaps in data can blight the reliability of any takeaways, or beleaguer analysis. And any investigator who tries to restart their trial will be doing so in a totally different Ukraine from when they started, says Mike Clarke, a clinical trial design expert at Queen’s University Belfast.
And not only does suspending and restarting trials potentially produce bad data, it can be devastating for the patients—especially those with end-stage diseases for whom participating in a trial is their last hope. “For oncology patients, this is also a matter of survival,” says Ivan Vyshnyvetskyy, president of the Ukrainian Association for Clinical Research.. It has a sizable, capable medical and research workforce with a reputation for delivering reliable data.
“The main problem is logistics,” says Vyshnyvetskyy. “It is almost impossible to ship biosamples from Ukraine and investigational medical products into Ukraine from the sponsors.” Many of the materials required for clinical trials are located in Kyiv, he says, which is a combat zone. “So it is almost impossible to get those materials, even though they are in Ukraine now.”
In western and some central parts of Ukraine, trial runners are continuing to make patient visits where they can, or to at least check in by phone. Vyshnyvetskyy’s organization is trying to relocate patients from the most vulnerable research sites to other regions of Ukraine where the research is able to continue, for now.
You mean all those bio warfare labs are not functioning, yes tragic loss for research
Not getting killed by Russians is a bigger issue.