Clinical trials enhance healthcare by offering patients access to the newest and most promising experimental treatments. Even more importantly, they give patients hope for a healthier future.
Growing our clinical trials program has been prioritized as part of UAB’s Research Strategic Initiative with strong support from the Heersink School of Medicine and the UAB Health System. The focus is aimed at strengthening industry partnerships, streamlining administrative systems and processes, and reducing time to activation.
To advance these goals, key leadership appointments for Heersink’s clinical trials administration were announced in 2025. Dana Rizk, M.D., was appointed associate dean for Clinical Trials and Cynthia Joiner, Ph.D., MPH, R.N., was named assistant dean for Clinical Research Operations. These appointments build upon the December 2024 announcement of David Kimberlin, M.D., professor of Pediatrics, as the associate vice president for Clinical Trials for UAB, and the appointment of Mike Matthews as assistant vice president for Clinical Trials Operations for UAB.
The establishment of the UAB Academic Research Organization for Clinical Trials (ARO-CT) represents a significant overhaul of the administrative support structure for clinical trials. Developed as a hub-and-spoke model connecting a central coordinating office with researchers across campus, this approach promotes shared standards, reduces duplication, and ensures that trials are activated and managed with greater speed and consistency.
These efforts have already yielded impressive results: The time to activation for industry-sponsored clinical trial agreements has been cut nearly in half, from 140 days to 73 days, with efforts underway to reduce that number even more. UAB’s clinical trials expenditures have increased four-fold over the past 10 years and currently stand at close to $140 million, and industry-funded clinical trials have more than doubled in number since FY2015.
The UAB O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center has achieved a strategic expansion of its cancer clinical trials operations over the past five years, leading to a near doubling in trial intensive clinical faculty during this time and a $1.5 million expansion of the center’s clinical trials office. These advances have led to a 50 percent increase in the yearly number of cancer patients entering clinical trials from 2020 to 2024. As of November, the O’Neal Cancer Center is on target for 500 patients accrued to cancer clinical trials in 2025, a 20 percent increase over 2024.