Clinical Trial Center (CTC)

Vision

To be the leading clinical trial center in Ethiopia 2031. 

Mission            

The mission of CTC is to conduct innovative and high-quality clinical trials, provide short term and long-term research trainings, and solve health problems. 

Objectives

• Conduct, support and facilitate clinical trials
• Provide capacity building
• Long-term and short-term Training
• Contribute for the advancement of knowledge

Major Initiatives and Function of the CTC

The UOG CTC will ultimately focus on clinical research, education, supervision of clinical trials, data management and external consultation

RESEARCH

The center will develop research methods and conduct high quality clinical trial. The center will be devoted to facilitating clinical studies while taking participants safety.

TRAINING

The center will advocate using evidence-based medicine for decision making through training and knowledge management. It will affiliate with higher educational institutes and other research centers. Health care workers at different level of the health system will be the key participants in the capacity building and will be equipped with knowledge and practice of clinical trials.

• Training on Clinical Trials
• Laboratory for MSC and PhD Students

 SUPERVISION AND MONITORING

The center will supervise clinical trials in Ethiopia. It will review and evaluate study data for participant safety, study conduct and progress, and make recommendations to continuation, modification, or termination of the trial. The activities include

• Data for evidence of study-related adverse events.
• Assessment of adherence to the protocols

DATA MANAGEMENT

In the UoG clinical trial center, best practices will be adopted to ensure that data are reliable, complete, and accurate. This will be facilitated by the use of software application that maintain an audit trial and provide easy identification and resolution of data discrepancies. Suitable opensource software application (e.g. OpenClinica, openCDMS, TrialDB, or PhOSCo) will be downloaded for free and customized to the context of UoG clinical trial center. A review article (Krishnankutty B. et al, 2012) stated that the opensource applications are as similar as the commercial clinical data management software in terms of functionality.

Thematic areas

• COVID-19, other virological diseases including HIV
• Neglected tropical diseases including malaria
• Tuberculosis and bacterial infections
• Non communicable disease
• Traditional medicine

Ongoing projects

ANTICOV Clinical trial

Trial ID: PACTR202006537901307

Title: An open-label, multicenter, randomized, adaptive platform trial of the safety and efficacy of several therapies, including antiviral therapies, versus control in mild/moderate cases of COVID-19 (ANTICOV Trial)

PI: Dr. Mezgebu Silamsaw Asres

Status: Currently recruiting

Diabetes Mellitus and Spices study

Trial ID: PACTR202202640395224

Title: Improving blood sugar control through patients’ choice of evidence-based spices and foods with hypoglycemic effect – A pragmatic trial.

PI: Dr. Mezgebu Silamsaw Asres

Status: Currently recruiting

Collaborators

AHRI

The Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) was founded in 1970 through the initiative of the Norwegian and Swedish Save the Children organizations seconded by the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia. The Institute got its name from the Norwegian physician, Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen, who first described the leprosy bacillus (Mycobacterium leprae). AHRI was established as a biomedical research institute located next to the All Africa Leprosy Rehabilitation and Training Hospital (ALERT).

AHRI acknowledges receiving core-funding from Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation(Norad) in addition to Ethiopian Government contribution, which it uses to support among other things students’ research within the scope of the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) programme. These include epidemiological and social studies for characterization of poverty-related and neglected diseases.

LRTC

Established in 2004 the Leishmaniasis Research and Treatment Center provides treatment services to patients, carries out GCP compliant clinical trial clinical trial research on Visceral Leishmaniasis.  The Center also has a 24-bed ward and laboratory. Researches are sponsored by Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Switzerland a collaborative, patients’ needs-driven, non-profit drug research and development (R&D) organization that is developing new treatments for Neglected Diseases and the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp, Belgium.