Centralised Contracting Office
Understand how the Centralised Contracting Office (CCO) streamlines the contracting process for Multi-Site Industry Sponsored Trials (ISTs) across Singapore's public healthcare clusters.
Clinical trial start-up time is one of the key considerations when performing site selection for clinical trials. It includes time taken for clinical trial agreement negotiations, IRB approval, regulatory approval and site startup. The time taken for negotiating the clinical trial agreements for Industry Sponsored Trials (ISTs) can go up to six (6) months.
Centralised Contracting Office
To address the delays due to lengthy negotiations over contract terms, SCRI has launched the Centralised Contracting Office (CCO) to streamline the contracting process for Multi-Site Industry Sponsored Trials (ISTs) across Singapore's public healthcare clusters. Multi-Site ISTs refer to ISTs involving 2 or more public healthcare institutions within a public health cluster or, across multiple public health clusters. The CCO comprises of 1 dedicated contracting/legal professional to support each public healthcare cluster in the review of all agreements for Multi-Site ISTs such as Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), Clinical Trial Agreements (CTAs) and CTA Amendments. The CCO has been accepting submissions since November 2025, with several NDAs, CTAs and amendments to CTAs already executed within our target timelines.
For any new request to review agreements for Multi-Site ISTs, please write to the CCO team at uma.sockalingam@scri.cris.sg or ncb@scri.cris.sg. In your email, please provide the following background information to facilitate the review:
NDAs
Study Title
The Institutions Involved in the Multi-Site ISTs
Names of the Institutional reps (e.g. KOLs/PIs and/or Study team) that the company is in discussion with
Agreement Template: Please specify if there is a pre-existing template with the public healthcare institution
CTAs
Study Title
Name of Sponsor
Nature of Investigational Medicinal Product (E.g., Drug, Cell Therapy Gene Therapy (CTGT), Medical Device)
The Institutions Involved in the Multi-Site ISTs
Names of the Institutional reps (e.g. KOLs/PIs and/or Study team) that the company is in discussions with
Who developed the Study Protocol?
IRB and HSA
Has the application process initiated? To Provide the ECOS Reference Number (where available)
Date of submission of the application
Date of approval of the application
Will any Equipment be provided on loan?
Human Biological Material (HBM)
Will any HBM be collected, and will the leftover HBM be used for future research?
Will any additional HBM be collected for future research?
Will any Personal Data be shared with the Sponsor, and the purpose of the sharing?
Agreement Template: Please specify if there is a pre-existing template with the public healthcare institution
CTA Amendments
Study Title
Name of Sponsor
The Institutions Involved
Names of the Institutional reps (e.g. KOLs/PIs and/or Study team) that the company is in discussions with
The Amendment #
The reason for the Amendment
IRB and HSA
Is any amendment required?
IRB Reference Number
Enhancing the Adoption of the MCTA
Pursuant to feedback from Singapore Association for Pharmaceutical Industries (SAPI) and contract research organisations (CROs), NCO has developed enhanced versions of the Master Clinical Trial Agreement V2.1.1 in 2022 for Industry Sponsored Trials (ISTs) as listed below:
For Investigational Medicinal Product, which is a drug product or drug products
Framework Agreement:
Umbrella Agreement with pre-agreed terms for conduct of ISTs
For every new IST, the relevant Sponsor (a signing party to the Framework Agreement) to only sign a simplified Study Agreement to capture the study-specific details of the IST.
The 3 public healthcare clusters are parties to the Framework Agreement.
Recommended for any companies interested in pursuing multiple ISTs in Singapore
For Investigational Medicinal Product, which is a Drug product or Medical device
MCTAs
Standalone template with pre-negotiated terms for conduct of ISTs
The 3 public healthcare clusters have agreed to these terms
Available for ISTs involving drug products and medical devices
Recommended for biotechs
Furthermore, the Master Clinical Trial Agreement V2.1.1 was more suited for contracting between the sponsors and the trial sites, and there were no other standardised CTA templates in place with the CROs. CRO versions of the MCTA for ISTs involving Investigational Medicinal Product and Medical Device are now available.
Please approach ncb@scri.cris.sg for more information on the Framework Agreement and the MCTA.
