Top 10 Clinical Trial Sponsors by Total Trial Count
PlainTrial ranks trial sponsors by the total number of trials each sponsor has registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, using the sponsors aggregate. Updated automatically as new data is processed.
Research period:
Research question
Across the sponsoring organizations that conduct clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, which sponsors have accumulated the largest total number of registered trials, and how does each sponsor's trial portfolio break down across recruiting status and the four canonical trial phases?
Methodology
This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.
Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.
Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.
Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.
Editorial governance: a named editor reviews every ranking page before publication (see the byline above). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.
Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.
See the methodology page for the complete data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.
Top 10 Clinical Trial Sponsors by Total Trial Count
Live data: reflects the current dataset
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the current 10-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.
| # | Sponsor | Total trials | Recruiting | Completed | Phase 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | National Cancer Institute (NCI) | 3,257 | 326 | 2,051 | 193 |
| 2 | Mayo Clinic | 2,844 | 544 | 1,816 | 86 |
| 3 | M.D. Anderson Cancer Center | 2,692 | 549 | 1,201 | 96 |
| 4 | Massachusetts General Hospital | 2,032 | 336 | 1,284 | 58 |
| 5 | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) | 2,006 | 155 | 1,642 | 123 |
| 6 | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | 1,884 | 327 | 1,104 | 67 |
| 7 | Pfizer | 1,845 | 106 | 1,335 | 411 |
| 8 | Stanford University | 1,744 | 264 | 1,122 | 51 |
| 9 | Duke University | 1,725 | 187 | 1,244 | 41 |
| 10 | University of California, San Francisco | 1,713 | 272 | 1,130 | 44 |
Source: U.S. National Library of Medicine, ClinicalTrials.gov Registry (sponsor aggregates). Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed. U.S. National Library of Medicine, ClinicalTrials.gov Registry (sponsor aggregates). Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is National Cancer Institute (NCI), with a value of 3,257 on the Total trials column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the U.S. National Library of Medicine publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (3,257) and the 10th-ranked record (1,713) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. National Library of Medicine, specifically the ClinicalTrials.gov Registry (sponsor aggregates). PlainTrial ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Sponsor attribution depends on the registered sponsor at the time of trial registration. A trial sponsored by a subsidiary of a large pharmaceutical company may appear under the subsidiary's name rather than the parent's; corporate restructuring, mergers, and divestitures over time can shift which trials are attributed to which sponsor. Academic medical centers and research universities often appear separately even when their trials are funded by a common grant program, so sponsor counts may not align with funding-flow analyses. Industry sponsors and academic sponsors operate under different reporting incentives, industry sponsors are subject to FDAAA reporting requirements that drive comprehensive registry coverage of their interventional trials, while academic sponsors may report selectively. Phase 3 trials in particular cluster around industry sponsors due to the cost and infrastructure required for late-stage trials.
Secondary cut from the same source
Top 10 sponsors by Phase 3 trial count (late-stage efficacy and safety trials in larger participant populations)
Sources
- ClinicalTrials.gov - https://clinicaltrials.gov/
Every figure on PlainTrial is rendered directly from the ClinicalTrials.gov registry, no number is typed in by an editor. This ranking sorts sponsors by total registered trial count, live from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, the data changelog, or report a data error.