Rescue sites are supposed to stabilize a stumbling trial, not set the pace. Tekton Research’s St. Louis team, brought in after enrollment had already stalled on an Alzheimer’s study, ended up exceeding its assigned goal, a result that matters more operationally than it might appear on the surface.
The source does not disclose the specific target or the final enrolled count, so the exact margin of outperformance is unknown. What the announcement does identify is the core team: principal investigator Ernest Graypel, MD, MHA, alongside coordinators Brandon Lenfest and Mejra Dzinic. Rescue-site engagements carry a structural disadvantage: the site inherits a trial mid-stream, with tighter windows, often tougher screening criteria enforced by a data safety monitoring board watching early dropout patterns, and a sponsor already nervous about timeline. Beating enrollment targets under those conditions points to screening efficiency and community access that a site built from the ground up would not face the same test to prove.
Alzheimer’s trials are a particularly demanding environment for enrollment right now. Since lecanemab (Leqembi) received traditional FDA approval in July 2023 and donanemab (Kisunla) followed in July 2024, patients at the mild cognitive impairment and early dementia stages now have approved treatment options. That shifts the calculus for some prospective participants weighing a trial against available therapy, which tightens the pool for studies targeting similar populations and puts more pressure on sites to convert inquiries into enrolled, eligible patients.
Tekton’s St. Louis result is also consistent with a pattern the organization has been building: its San Antonio and Edmond teams recently hit 300% of their combined enrollment target in a Phase 2 obesity trial, randomizing 60 participants against an initial goal of 20. The metric to watch for the Alzheimer’s program is whether the sponsor uses Tekton St. Louis as a permanent site for any extension or follow-on study, which would signal that rescue-site performance translated into a durable slot in the trial network rather than a one-time fix.
Source link: https://tektonresearch.com/st-louis-team-exceeds-enrollment-goal-in-alzheimers-trial/
Moe Alsumidaie, MBA, MSF, is founder and Chief Editor of Vanguard Publications, which publishes Clinical Trial Vanguard, Pharma Vanguard and BullScope, and Head of Research at CliniBiz. He has two decades in clinical trial operations and data science, with earlier roles at Genentech, Abbott Vascular and Stanford University Medical Center, and is a guest lecturer in clinical trial sciences at Rutgers University.
