In hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices throughout the country, Canadians take part in clinical trials conducted by Boehringer Ingelheim's Medical Department. Through their voluntary participation, new therapies are tested. They may eventually bring hope, relief, and possibly a cure to hundreds of thousands of fellow sufferers, not just in Canada but worldwide.

Reflecting the broadened scope of the company's research & development activities, the Medical Department at Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd./Ltee has significantly increased the number of clinical trials being conducted over the last few years.

The Medical Department is conducting research from Phase I testing in healthy volunteers through to post-approval Phase IV trials in the following therapeutic areas:

• Virology (acute and chronic viral diseases, HIV, hepatitis C virus)
• Cardiovascular (chronic heart failure, deep vein thrombosis, myocardial infarction, hypertension)
• Oncology (signal transduction, cell cycle therapeutic proteins)
• Central nervous system (Parkinson’s disease, hypoactive sexual desire disorder)
• Metabolism (diabetes mellitus type II, obesity, dyslipidemia)
• Respiratory medicine (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma,  chronic bronchitis, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis)

The safety of participants who take part in clinical trial is of the utmost importance and we are committed to upholding the highest international standards in all of our research initiatives.

A landmark trial is a large-scale, randomized, controlled clinical trial with thousands of participants recruited from a great number of sites around the world. The results of such trials have a potential to broadly impact clinical practice.

In 2008, Boehringer Ingelheim presented the results from more landmark trials in cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebrovascular diseases than any other pharmaceutical company. These landmark trials represent involvement in clinical research of more than 40 countries and more than 70,000 participants.