Today’s guest is Gadi Saarony, the CEO of Advarra, the independent review board that makes sure clinical trials are safe and ethical for the people who take part in them. Before Advarra, he spent nearly 17 years at Parexel, one of the world’s largest CROs, where he rose from leading strategy to running the company’s entire clinical operation across 53 countries.
In this episode, Gadi explains why drug development still struggles with the same problems it had 20 years ago: slow study startup, missed enrollment targets and a deeply fragmented system. That’s true even as CROs have grown into an essential part of the industry. He walks through how outsourcing has swung like a pendulum between pharma and CROs, and why he thinks CROs should run the process while sponsors stay accountable for the science. He also shares why ethics boards are more than a checkbox, how he led Advarra through COVID weeks after becoming CEO, and how he decides what the company should and shouldn’t build. Finally, we discuss whether AI can close the widening gap between how fast science moves and how fast drugs get developed, and why it has to “move at the speed of trust.”