Foundation Fighting Blindness, Clinical Enrollment Join Forces to Launch Patient-Centric Trial Matching Initiative

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA and COLUMBIA, MD – The Foundation Fighting Blindness (the Foundation), the driving force in the global development of treatments and cures for blinding diseases, has formalized a partnership with patient quality firm Clinical Enrollment (CE) to offer the market’s leading clinical trial recruitment resource for inherited retinal disease (IRD) research. The partnership will formalize an ongoing commitment by both companies to accelerate the development of treatments and cures for retinal diseases, while prioritizing a patient-centric approach.
 
Adding to the impact of this collaboration is the fact that Clinical Enrollment Founder and CEO, Bryan Manning, has a personal connection to helping get potential treatments into the hands of people who can most benefit from them. “As someone living with a rare retinal condition myself who has spent most of my career supporting the IRD space in a variety of capacities, I — and by extension, Clinical Enrollment — am devoted to advancing recruitment and research in the most impactful ways possible,” says Manning. “Being able to join forces with an organization like the Foundation Fighting Blindness, which I’ve had a relationship with for over a decade, and which has jointly been so invested in this space, is the ideal partnership to serve patients. We couldn’t be more excited.”
 
For study sponsors running inherited retinal disease clinical trials, the Foundation / CE combined patient-matching capability signifies a substantial leg up in the ability to hit their enrollment benchmarks, and without financial risk. Clinical Enrollment’s success-based pricing structure means that the boutique agency is compensated based on randomizations and Informed Consent Forms signed, thus alleviating stress for cash-strapped sponsors. IRD patients and study sponsors are expected to benefit from this optimized trial recruitment process. 
 
The Foundation’s 40,000-member My Retina Tracker® Registry is a research database of individuals affected by inherited retinal diseases. The Registry is designed to help accelerate the discovery of treatments and cures, in part by connecting researchers and companies efficiently with people interested in participating in clinical trials. In parallel, the My Retina Tracker Genetic Testing Program offers individuals with a clinical diagnosis of an IRD access to genetic testing and counseling at no cost to the patient. This program also offers targeted familial variant testing to blood relatives of individuals who receive a positive result through the My Retina Tracker Program to further determine the disease inheritance pattern within a family, among other benefits. 
 
”The core of our mission is to remove barriers on the path to treatments for IRDs,” adds Todd Durham, Senior Vice President, Clinical and Outcomes Research at the Foundation. “Pairing the Foundation’s My Retina Tracker® Registry with the services offered by CE means that individuals with IRDs will have an easier path from the initial recruitment message to screening at a clinical site. We believe this collaboration has the potential to reduce sponsors’ recruitment timelines while providing an excellent experience for potential trial participants.”
 
To find out how to work with Clinical Enrollment, email partner@clinicalenrollment.com. To find out more about the Foundation Fighting Blindness’ impactful work, or to learn more about the My Retina Tracker® Registry, visit the Foundation’s website and/or contact us at partnerships@fightingblindness.org.
 
About Clinical Enrollment
Clinical Enrollment is a boutique patient quality firm utilizing carefully-honed marketing approaches to recruit patients via bespoke content, custom video, and emotion-driven messaging. Their social-first approach involves supercharging recruitment to ensure benchmarks are met — or exceeded — and they specialize in white glove site relations, clinical trial education, as well as triple-screening potential candidates. Serving sponsors that vary in scale from Fortune 100 companies to privately-held single-therapy Biotechs, CE has helped accelerate clinical trials in treatment areas such as oncology, CNS, ophthalmology, and rare diseases, amongst others. 
 
About the Foundation Fighting Blindness
Established in 1971, the Foundation Fighting Blindness is the world’s leading private funding source for retinal degenerative disease research. The Foundation has raised more than $954 million toward its mission of accelerating research for preventing, treating, and curing blindness caused by the spectrum of blinding retinal diseases including: retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration, and Usher syndrome. Visit FightingBlindness.org for more information.