By Clinical Research News Staff  

October 17, 2025 | Clinical trial recruitment has long been a hurdle in medical research, and despite decades of discussion, the obstacles are still standing, particularly in adapting marketing strategies to today’s digital world. On the latest episode of The Scope of Things, host Deborah Borfitz spoke with Christine Senn, senior vice president of site sponsor innovation at Advarra, about the challenges sites and sponsors face and offered some practical tactics for solving them. 

One major challenge is outdated federal guidance. Senn explained that while agencies like the FDA do update rules, regulatory processes are slow and complex, often requiring public input, congressional review, and harmonization across international organizations. As a result, sponsors and institutional review boards (IRBs) must interpret rules designed for former times, which can lead to overly conservative or inconsistent marketing approaches. 

Centralized advertising from sponsors, while ensuring regulatory compliance and consistency, can also hinder recruitment. For example, there may be a failure to account for local community language. Senn highlighted an example from COPD trials in Georgia and Alabama where patients were more familiar with the term “emphysema” than “COPD.” By modifying the language to reflect the local vernacular, enrollment improved significantly without compromising study integrity. 

However, site-created advertising materials face their own regulatory pitfalls since they cannot (but sometimes do) imply guaranteed benefits, exaggerate compensation, or obscure the investigational nature of the treatment. Senn shared examples ranging from before-and-after photos in dermatology trials to cartoon depictions of payment—common mistakes that IRBs flag.  

Sponsors, on the other hand, often rely on in-house advertising teams or agencies with historical trial data, but these ads sometimes fail to account for health literacy, using technical or complex terms that can confuse patients. A balance between regulatory compliance, patient understanding, and recruitment efficiency is critical. 

Senn urged IRBs to evaluate their own processes objectively and to keep a few things in mind, including  whether guidelines are keeping pace with technology and how editorial restrictions are affecting patients. Streamlined reviews that focus on safety rather than over-interpretation of FDA guidelines can improve both efficiency and enrollment outcomes. 

To learn more about overcoming recruitment deadlocks and the latest news on aspirin, beta blockers, and more, listen to The Scope of Things podcast.