Macro Trials, a precision research clinical platform, launched today to transform clinical trials. The company’s founders incubated Macro Trials with INITIATE Studios, a venture studio that co-creates companies at the intersection of healthcare, life sciences, and technology. As part of its launch, the company also announced $6 million in seed funding for ongoing product development, expanding its clinical trial infrastructure across geographies and therapeutic areas, and scaling its study execution and data generation flywheel as it fills an urgent market need. The round was led by MBX Capital and included participation from INITIATE Ventures, Healthy VC, Inflect Health, and Village Global, a venture firm backed by Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg.
“High-value therapeutics are the largest and fastest growing segment of pharmaceutical pipelines, but because clinical trials are fundamentally broken, many life-saving drugs will never make it to market. And those that do will cost far more than they should,” said Zeshan Muhammedi, Managing Partner of MBX Capital. “Macro’s patient centric model and generation of net-new data will improve the R&D landscape so that safer, better drugs will become more accessible.”
In 2021, there were a record-breaking 84 new drugs launched and another 20,000 in development. Although $212 billion was spent on R&D, success rates reached a record-low of 5%. These high failure rates continue to drive up the expense associated with bringing a new drug to market: it now costs approximately $2.7 billion to commercialize a high-value therapeutic, with 70% of that spend attributed to conducting clinical trials. Unfortunately, 80% of those trials fail to meet enrollment goals, and the challenges don’t end there. Even after a drug has been approved by the FDA, that drug may still fail to achieve its therapeutic target in the broader population, often due to significant under-representation of people of color, women, and older adults in the clinical trials that were conducted. Macro tackles these issues head on to bring rigorously tested, life-saving drugs to market faster and cheaper than ever before.
Via its digitally powered infrastructure, Macro works closely with pharmaceutical companies, CROs, physicians, and health systems to design, plan, and execute clinical trials for high-value therapeutics with increased research velocity. Through the aggregation and synthesis of proprietary real-world evidence (RWE), Macro generates an immensely valuable longitudinal patient record.
The Right Model for Equitable Access
Powered by a distributed "hub-and-spoke" model, Macro has conducted trials in all research settings - from in-person to decentralized. The company’s turnkey platform empowers physician groups and independent clinicians to participate in groundbreaking research via workflow-native efficiency tools, clinical research personnel, a network of logistic partners, and digital infrastructure for real-time data collection and management. By enabling patient recruitment at the site of care, Macro and its network of principal investigators lower the barrier to entry in clinical research by meeting patients where they are, driving a track record of equitable enrollment that reflects the diversity of the impacted population.
From even its earliest trials, Macro has proven that it truly unlocks increased diversity for results that map to real-world patient demographics for greater post-market success. For example, based on a recent representative study Macro enrolled >75% female trial participants compared to an industry standard of 41%; showed age disparity between trial participants and patients of less than one year, compared to the typical 7-10 years; and 46% of Macro’s trial participants were Hispanic-identifying, versus the typical 6% average Hispanic representation observed in clinical research.
“We are living through a golden age of therapeutics, but there are glaring gaps that make it challenging for breakthrough research to be brought to market,” said Iana Dimkova, CEO of Macro Trials. “Macro Trials is purpose-built to address these gaps with our patient-focused, end-to-end clinical research platform. Harnessing the latest technology advances, we believe we can amplify therapeutic value from one patient to millions, ultimately transforming care.”
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