The race to develop and commercialize GLP-1-based therapies for obesity and diabetes has created unprecedented momentum in clinical research. Dozens of sponsors and CROs are simultaneously conducting trials—often in overlapping geographic regions—with many vying for access to the same pool of patients. While this represents exciting progress in metabolic disease treatment, it also presents a critical challenge: the rise of professional and duplicate research subjects.
As highlighted in our recent PharmiWeb article, these individuals knowingly or unknowingly participate in multiple clinical trials at the same time, or without proper washout periods. The GLP-1 space is particularly vulnerable to this issue due to the volume of studies and strong incentives for participants.
Why GLP-1 Trials Are Especially at Risk
GLP-1 studies require large subject enrollment numbers, making recruitment highly competitive. Participants are often motivated by more than compensation—they may be seeking access to drugs they can’t afford, or they may worry about being placed on placebo or receiving a lower dose in one trial and attempt to join another simultaneously in hopes of securing active treatment.
A significant number of subjects find these trials and their locations easily using resources like ClinicalTrials.gov, which allows them to identify multiple ongoing GLP-1 trials in their area. While transparency is essential in clinical research, this level of accessibility also enables subjects to “site-shop” and attempt dual enrollment.
These behaviors lead to:
- Serious protocol violations
- Compromised data integrity and skewed efficacy or safety outcomes
- Risk of cumulative drug exposure and adverse events
- Increased placebo response
- Higher trial costs and lost time due to re-screening or re-enrollment
Why In-House Tools Are Not Enough
Some sponsors have attempted to manage this risk using internal tools to flag duplicate subjects through EDC systems, lab values, or retrospective data review. Unfortunately, these methods are too little, too late—often identifying violations after the subject has already been screened, dosed, or randomized.
Worse still, these systems cannot detect cross-sponsor duplication, which is a significant blind spot given how many GLP-1 trials are running in parallel. We routinely observe subjects attempting to re-enroll not only within the same trial across different sites, but also in competing studies from entirely separate sponsors.
Verified Clinical Trials: The Only Proactive, Cross-Sponsor Solution
Verified Clinical Trials (VCT) solves this problem at the source. Our system operates at the time of screening, identifying duplicate or professional subjects before any trial-related procedures take place.
Key advantages of VCT include:
- Cross-sponsor and cross-therapeutic protection—essential in the crowded GLP-1 space
- Real-time alerts for overlapping or duplicate enrollment attempts
- Biometric authentication options to verify identity and prevent re-enrollment
- Coverage across most major GLP-1 sponsors, sites, and global research units
- Support for both Phase I and later-stage trials across multiple indications
As described in more detail in our PharmiWeb article, VCT is the largest and only global cross-sponsor subject registry, and it’s trusted by many of the top pharmaceutical companies to ensure participant safety and trial success.
The Bottom Line
Professional and duplicate subjects pose a real, escalating threat to GLP-1 clinical trials. The stakes are too high to rely on internal or after-the-fact solutions. By proactively identifying these risks at the point of screening, Verified Clinical Trials provides the protection your study—and your data—requires.
Protect your trial. Protect your participants. Protect your results.
👉 Learn more about professional patients in GLP-1 trials and how Verified Clinical Trials helps mitigate the risks:
https://verifiedclinicaltrials.com/professional-patients-in-clinical-trials/
