Cogstate announces signing of first contract for Precision Recruitment tool

Cognition technology company Cogstate (CGS.ASX) is pleased to announce the signing of its first contract for Precision Recruitment, a new web-based tool for streamlining patient recruitment for clinical drug trials. 

The contract will generate US$1.8 million of revenue for Cogstate over an estimated 24 month period.

Precision Recruitment was launched last month for pharmaceutical companies to reduce the costs and time associated with recruiting patients for clinical trials. Traditionally, most patient pre-trial screening has taken place on-site, a slow, expensive and inefficient process, but Precision Recruitment allows patients to be tested and screened at home before being asked to join a clinical trial.

Potential trial participants are identified by the pharmaceutical company and asked to perform a series of online tests on Cogstate’s web portal. Following the test, patients are asked to either enter the next stage of recruitment or, for those not appropriate for inclusion in the trial, they will be asked to join Cogstate’s Cognition Registry, a database which tracks changes in cognitive function over time, for availability in future clinical trials.

Cogstate CEO Brad O’Connor said patient recruitment delayed the average clinical trial by nearly five months. Cogstate estimates each lost day costs drug companies at least $600,000 in forgone revenue.

“As drug companies focus their research on halting Alzheimer’s disease in its earliest stages, finding and recruiting the right patients becomes vital,” Mr O’Connor said.

“Drug therapies are now focused on detecting and stopping cognitive impairment in its earliest stages and Cogstate’s sensitive and accurate battery of tests can detect the earliest signs of cognitive decline associated with the Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.”

While Precision Recruitment has obvious applications for drug trials focused on dementia and cognitive impairment, an increasing number of clinical trials now include cognitive impairment as an inclusion criteria. These include clinical trials of drugs treating psychosis, cancer, depression and stroke at various stages of development (i.e. Phase 1, 2 or 3).

Mr O’Connor said the addition of Precision Recruitment meant Cogstate now offered pharmaceutical companies a vertically integrated suite of products – from patient recruitment through to cognition monitoring during clinical trials.

“Precision Recruitment decreases trial recruitment costs while accelerating time to recruit, therefore generating massive savings for the drug company,” he said.

“Alongside our existing suite of Clinical Trial products, we see Precision Recruitment as an important source of future revenue as we leverage Cogstate’s cognition testing technology across multiple platforms.”

In a presentation released to the market last week, Cogstate announced that it expected to be able to sign contracts with a cumulative value between $3 - $6 million for Precision Recruitment services before 30 June 2015, the first year of commercial release of the technology.