Biogen Starts Real-World Data Network for Neurological Disease Therapeutics

March 25, 2022

The makers of Aduhelm have set up the Clinical Data Research Network (CRDN), a real-world evidence (RWE) database with data from 45,000 patients. With the CRDN, Biogen hopes to track how effective therapeutics for neurological diseases are after they leave trials. This comes as the company is set to perform a phase 4 trial for its Alzheimer’s drug to establish it’s efficacy. The hope is that the CRDN can help researchers expand their focus from homogenous randomized controlled trials and cover patients more representative of the general population.

According to Gareth Macdonald of Fierce Biotech, “With this real-world data approach, Biogen may be able to get a better picture of efficacy for its neurological disease medicines. Real-world studies include larger patient populations that are historically underrepresented in randomized controlled trials—patients who are ethnically, racially or geographically diverse and those who have other conditions or are taking concomitant medications that may otherwise exclude them from typical clinical research.”