UCL Joins WHO Global Clinical Trials Forum
20 Nov 2025
We are proud to announce that University College London (UCL) is now part of the WHO Global Clinical Trials Forum (GCTF) network.
This international, multi-stakeholder network brings together experts and organisations to strengthen clinical trial capacity worldwide. Its goal is to improve how trials are planned and run so they produce reliable evidence for better health decisions.
The GCTF network also helps put WHO’s best-practice guidance into action, covering everything from trial design and management to oversight and how results are used.
As a new member of the GCTF network, we will contribute with our expertise in innovative and adaptive platform trial designs, supporting WHO’s Global Action Plan for clinical trials. This collaboration aims to accelerate high-quality research and improve access to life-saving interventions across diverse health settings.
Our director, Max Parmar, said: “The MRC CTU at UCL is committed to provide methodological support to bring the latest advances in design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials, for trials that address local health priorities. We will train and transfer our capacities to local researchers around the world as we seek to advance WHO’s Global Action Plan on Clinical Trial Ecosystem Strengthening, particularly action 4 on adoption of innovative trial designs that can more rapidly provide high quality evidence to address unmet needs. This includes advancing understanding and uptake of adaptively designed platform trials where these are the most efficient way to answer important public health or clinical practice questions”.
This builds on our long-standing commitment to building clinical trial capacity around the world. One example of this work is our popular Capacity Strengthening Hub on The Global Health Network.
Further information: