Top Clinical Trial Sponsors

The most active organizations sponsoring US clinical trials, ranked by total trial count. Source: ClinicalTrials.gov.

Clinical trial sponsorship reveals which organizations are investing most heavily in medical research. The largest sponsors include global pharmaceutical companies with hundreds of active trials, the National Institutes of Health and its component institutes, and major academic medical centers running investigator-initiated studies. The mix of sponsors shapes which conditions receive the most research attention and where trial sites are located.

#SponsorTotal TrialsRecruiting
1 M.D. Anderson Cancer Center 1,252 515
2 National Cancer Institute (NCI) 1,210 313
3 Mayo Clinic 1,066 512
4 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 955 304
5 Massachusetts General Hospital 746 303
6 VA Office of Research and Development 634 269
7 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) 595 143
8 University of California, San Francis 594 240
9 Stanford University 558 243
10 University of Pennsylvania 537 180
11 University of Colorado, Denver 536 244
12 Yale University 531 233
13 Duke University 519 171
14 Johns Hopkins University 514 229
15 Washington University School of Medicine 499 194
16 Pfizer 459 82
17 AstraZeneca 451 138
18 University of Michigan 446 163
19 University of Alabama at Birmingham 443 200
20 Eli Lilly and Company 423 102
21 Northwestern University 419 159
22 University of Florida 415 150
23 Emory University 413 190
24 NYU Langone Health 406 176
25 University of Pittsburgh 405 147
26 Novartis Pharmaceuticals 388 92
27 University of Washington 388 143
28 Wake Forest University Health Sciences 381 160
29 Brigham and Women's Hospital 372 134
30 University of Minnesota 365 165
31 GlaxoSmithKline 358 40
32 University of California, Los Angeles 346 152
33 City of Hope Medical Center 346 147
34 University of Wisconsin, Madison 343 137
35 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 338 107
36 Columbia University 329 151
37 University of California, San Diego 322 135
38 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 320 94
39 University of Utah 310 127
40 University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center 308 148
41 University of Chicago 305 151
42 Hoffmann-La Roche 303 63
43 Bristol-Myers Squibb 301 67
44 Vanderbilt University Medical Center 289 116
45 Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai 287 149
46 Indiana University 282 135
47 University of Miami 264 132
48 Medical University of South Carolina 260 128
49 Merck Sharp & Dohme 257 103
50 Baylor College of Medicine 252 90
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