Bikem Akten Yalın: Turkey takes part in clinical trials but faces issues accessing new drugs

After her experience in academia and the pharmaceutical sector, Bikem Akten Yalın launched the "Second Reading" series examining health data, and evaluated Turkey's position in clinical trials and the problems experienced in accessing new drugs.

Having completed her PhD in neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine and continuing her career in drug development, Bikem Akten Yalın launched the "Second Reading" series to examine the discrepancies between press releases, articles, and physician evaluations. Published in a bilingual format, the articles address disease frequency in Türkiye, reimbursement conditions, and the country's position in research. Yalın stated that using breast cancer as an example, while Türkiye bears 1 percent of the global disease burden, its share of patients in Phase 3 studies is around 5 percent; out of 31 approved breast cancer drugs, 12 are not reimbursed, and of the 7 drugs that never came to the country, the main studies for four of them were conducted in Türkiye.

Yalın noted that although patients are included in clinical trials, they later experience difficulty accessing these drugs or have to pay high prices. Touching upon the feedback received on the research, Yalın stated that about two-thirds of clinical research centers are located in public university hospitals, Hacettepe and Ege universities host approximately one-fourth of these studies, and the rate for city hospitals remains at 8 percent, dropping to 3 percent in blood cancer studies. Yalın expressed that she benefited from artificial intelligence tools in her work but verified every piece of data by consulting the original source.