Chairman Griffith Helps Lead Effort to Revamp Rural Patient Access to Clinical Trials, Accelerate New Treatments to Market

Today, members of the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled legislation to revamp patient access to clinical trials. U.S. Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, and U.S. Congressman Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), a member of the Subcommittee on Health, released a bill titled the Faster Clinical Trials Act, which aims to streamline clinical processes, reduce regulatory burdens and enhance FDA capacities to expand access to therapies and treatments for patients. The bill seeks to improve the clinical trial landscape, promoting clinical research in routine health care settings, accelerating new-treatment development, and increasing innovative therapy access.

"Patients in rural communities like Virginia's Ninth District often travel hours to participate in clinical trials for needed medical treatments," said Chairman Griffith. "This reality discourages people from participating in clinical trials and hampers research efforts.

"Clinical trials play a major role in treatment discovery and research breakthroughs, especially for rare diseases where there are few, if any, available therapies on the market at times. The Faster Clinical Trials Act will expand research efforts, facilitate treatment options and support American patients, particularly in rural America.

"I thank Congressman Auchincloss for his proactive work, including working with me and my team, to develop these ideas in a comprehensive bill. I look forward to continued collaboration on policy ideas."

"This is a science infrastructure bill," said Congressman Auchincloss. "Researchers need quality data to inform hypotheses and experiments, turnkey clinical sites to test safety and efficacy, and evidence-driven standards. Data, trials, and standards are R&D infrastructure, and this legislation upgrades that infrastructure for the century of biology. I'm grateful to Chairman Griffith for his partnership."

BACKGROUND

The Faster Clinical Trials Act also contains measures that were included in the Energy and Commerce Committee bill, the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, that passed out of Committee this year. These measures include the Biosimilar Red Tape Elimination Act led by Representative August Pfluger (R-TX) and the Expedited Access to Biosimilars Act led by Representatives Nick Langworthy (R-NY) and Kim Schrier (D-WA).

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