Who runs clinical trials?

Universities, hospitals and nonprofits lead about 324,000 of the 465,000 clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov as of November 2026, or 70%. Drug, device and other companies lead about 114,000, or 25%; the U.S. National Institutes of Health leads about 7,900. The lead sponsor is the organization responsible for the trial; others may help pay for it.

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Key facts

Measure: Clinical trials (all years). Written from the data below.

  • Universities, hospitals and nonprofits has the highest figure, 323,664, followed by Companies (114,224) and Other governments (11,193).
  • Individuals has the lowest figure, 459, followed by Research networks (3,686) and Other U.S. federal agencies (4,324).
  • The highest is 705 times the lowest.

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Source and date

Source
ClinicalTrials.gov (U.S. National Library of Medicine), counted with its API v2
License
Public domain (U.S. government work); source National Library of Medicine
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “Who runs clinical trials?” Chart. Data: ClinicalTrials.gov (U.S. National Library of Medicine), counted with its API v2, https://clinicaltrials.gov/data-api/api (data as of November 3, 2026). https://chart.ly/charts/clinical-trials-by-sponsor (accessed November 4, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Lead sponsor Clinical trials (all years)
Universities, hospitals and nonprofits 323,664
Companies 114,224
Other governments 11,193
U.S. National Institutes of Health 7,887
Other U.S. federal agencies 4,324
Research networks 3,686
Individuals 459

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