1Day Sooner announced today the launch of its Cooperative Participant Organization (CPO), a first-of-its-kind independent collaborative organization that supports early-phase, high-impact clinical trials driven by the experience of and involving healthy participants.
Researchers at Leiden University, Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Research Programme, University of Oxford, and others are the first collaborators of 1Day Sooner’s CPO program. The CPO collaborates with institutions globally, with a current focus on Europe, North America, and Africa.
“There’s an unmet need for understanding, supporting, and involving healthy volunteers at smaller sites,” said Circe McDonald, director, clinical trials at 1Day Sooner. “Crucial research in solving today’s most pressing infectious diseases is often done on tight budgets by public or nonprofit institutions, which lack the resources and experience of large sponsors or CROs. Many of these studies require fewer than 50 participants and are conducted by academic researchers who may run only a few clinical trials during their careers.”
1Day Sooner is ideally placed to meet this unmet need. Over the past five years, it has built a global community of thousands of healthy volunteers who are motivated to advance medical research for the greater good, primarily through high-impact studies such as human challenge trials. 1Day Sooner has supported a range of infectious disease trials, including malaria, hepatitis C, shigella, dysentery, COVID-19, Zika virus, and influenza. The CPO team draws on the same ethos: its members comprise previous trial volunteers who also bring professional expertise in infectious diseases, volunteer engagement, data management and analysis, and early-phase clinical trial operations.
“It has been fantastic to work with 1DaySooner. They are a phenomenal group of incredibly dedicated people who do an amazing job as advocates, while also pushing the science forward to truly live up to their name. They have been a fantastic collaborator in our efforts to make and test an HCV vaccine,” said Jordan Feld, senior scientist and principal investigator, about working with the 1Day Sooner CPO team.
1Day Sooner’s CPO helps meet Horizon Europe’s “multi-actor approach” and national public and participant involvement (PPI) criteria, improving both funding competitiveness and ethical review outcomes.