IBM Watson Health has selected iBio Inc. to receive 18 months of use of the IBM Clinical Development (ICD) solution, free-of-charge.
 
IBM Watson Health recently began offering its ICD solution to eligible trial sponsor organizations as part of its efforts to help support the medical community to address the COVID-19 pandemic. IBM Watson Health has received interest in the offering from numerous hospitals, sponsors, contract research organizations and academic institutions and is currently enabling 15 COVID-19 disease trials.
 
“We are deeply appreciative of IBM’s vote-of-confidence, which recognizes the potential of iBio’s COVID-19 vaccine development efforts from among the hundreds of organizations that applied for access to IBM’s ICD solution,” said Tom Isett, co-chairman & CEO of iBio. “This technology helps to support the rapid and efficient undertaking of clinical trials of iBio’s COVID-19 vaccine candidates. It also complements our FastPharming System’s core speed, quality and scale-up advantages in the development of vaccines and therapeutics. Through strategic collaborations like this one, we believe iBio is now poised with the tools, technology and capital necessary to compete in the fight against COVID-19.”
 
Supporting Clinical Trials
 
iBio currently anticipates that data from the preclinical immunization studies of its two COVID-19 vaccine candidates, IBIO-200 and IBIO-201, which are being conducted at Texas A&M University System laboratories, will be available in Q3-2020. If the programs move into clinical trials, iBio believes it has the capability to rapidly develop and manufacture at clinical and commercial scales in its 130,000 square foot facility in Bryan, Texas.
 
“The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global public health crisis and there is an increasing sense of urgency to develop safe and effective treatments as infection rates continue to escalate at an alarming rate,” said Mary Varghese Presti, vice president, life sciences, IBM Watson Health. “We are inspired by iBio’s commitment, as well as all of the other leaders in the life sciences community, as they apply their expertise and ingenuity to help millions of patients worldwide. IBM is proud to play a meaningful role in this ambitious effort.”
 
ICD is a unified, SaaS-based electronic data capture (EDC) platform, designed to provide end-to-end visibility as well as patient, site and clinical trial management capabilities. ICD is designed to help clinical trial sponsors and clinical site staff reduce the time and cost of clinical trials by centralizing and organizing information, providing 24/7 access to clinical trial data via a single URL from any web-enabled device, and providing a flexible and scalable data management platform to help design and manage clinical trials by incorporating optional clinical trial-specific features and services.