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Data

Number of clinical trials by sponsor

What you should know about this indicator

  • This data comes from the database. It only includes or clinical trials that are marked as "completed" and have a valid "completion date". , which provide access to investigational drugs or devices for patients with serious conditions, are not included in this data.
  • Registration in the ClinicalTrials.gov database is mandatory for trials in the United States and for treatments that seek FDA approval, but voluntary for other trials conducted in other countries.
  • ClinicalTrials.gov has four categories for sponsors, but offers the option to classify as "Network", "Other Governmental Organization" or "Individual" as well. As these are not officially defined categories, but rather subcategories of the "Other" category, they are grouped under "Other" in this dataset.

How is this data described by its producer?

Funder type describes the organization that provides funding or support for a clinical study. This support may include activities related to funding, design, implementation, data analysis, or reporting. Organizations listed as sponsors and collaborators for a study are considered the funders of the study. ClinicalTrials.gov refers to four types of funders:

  • U.S. National Institutes of Health
  • Other U.S. Federal agencies (for example, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)
  • Industry (for example: pharmaceutical and device companies)
  • All others (including individuals, universities, and community-based organizations)
Number of clinical trials by sponsor
Annual number of clinical trials globally registered in the database, by sponsor type. ClinicalTrials.gov has four sponsor categories: Trials funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), other US federal agencies (e.g., , industry (e.g., pharmaceutical companies), and other sponsors (e.g., non-US governments, academic institutions, non-profits, and other people or entities).
Source
ClinicalTrials.gov (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 28, 2025
Next expected update
July 2026
Date range
1918–2031
Unit
trials

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

ClinicalTrials.gov – Clinical Trials (ClinicalTrials.gov)

ClinicalTrials.gov is a website and online database of clinical research studies and information about their results. The purpose of ClinicalTrials.gov is to provide information about clinical research studies to the public, researchers, and health care professionals.

Retrieved on
July 28, 2025
Retrieved from
https://clinicaltrials.gov/about-site/trends-charts
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
National Library of Medicine (US), National Center for Biotechnology Information, ClinicalTrials.gov. U.S. National Institutes of Health, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ (2025)

ClinicalTrials.gov is a website and online database of clinical research studies and information about their results. The purpose of ClinicalTrials.gov is to provide information about clinical research studies to the public, researchers, and health care professionals.

Retrieved on
July 28, 2025
Retrieved from
https://clinicaltrials.gov/about-site/trends-charts
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
National Library of Medicine (US), National Center for Biotechnology Information, ClinicalTrials.gov. U.S. National Institutes of Health, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ (2025)

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Number of clinical trials by sponsor”. Our World in Data (2025). Data adapted from ClinicalTrials.gov. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250818-180101/grapher/number-of-clinical-trials-by-sponsor.html [online resource] (archived on August 18, 2025).
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

ClinicalTrials.gov (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

ClinicalTrials.gov (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Number of clinical trials by sponsor” [dataset]. ClinicalTrials.gov, “Clinical Trials (ClinicalTrials.gov)” [original data]. Retrieved August 18, 2025 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250818-180101/grapher/number-of-clinical-trials-by-sponsor.html (archived on August 18, 2025).