Drug Evaluation Committee 2019-03 Concurrent Membership of Clinical Trial Review Committees and Conflict of Interest Committees
Related classification: Clinical Trial Review Committee
Date of first publication: 06/2019
Question
This is a question about external members of the Clinical Trial Review Committee.
The Chairperson of the school corporation serves as the Chairperson of this Institutional Review Board (IRB), and a physician from another university has been appointed as an external member. We have recently been consulted regarding the possibility of appointing this external member to also serve as an external member of our university’s Conflict of Interest Committee.
The Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the school corporation serves as the Chairperson of the Conflict of Interest Committee, just as they do for the Institutional Review Board. If the principal investigator has a conflict of interest with the sponsor of the clinical trial, that conflict will be reviewed by the Conflict of Interest Committee (and the Institutional Review Board will then conduct its review based on the Conflict of Interest Committee’s opinion).
In such a case, if the member concerned becomes a member of the Conflict of Interest Committee of our university, would he/she be considered to have "a conflict of interest with the establisher of the Clinical Trial Review Committee" under the GCP? Or, would it be a problem if there is no compensation as a member of the Conflict of Interest Committee?
JPMA's Opinion
Since you mentioned in your question that you participated in the Conflict of Interest Committee in your capacity as an external member, we believe that if your involvement is limited to this, you can be considered a "person who does not have an interest in the establisher of the clinical trial review committee" as defined in Article 28, Paragraph 1, Item 5 of the GCP.