What’s changing isn’t the region’s clinical research capability.
It’s the opportunity to put that capability to work.
For years, the case for conducting clinical research in Latin America has been built around a familiar list: Large and diverse patient populations. Experienced investigators. High-quality research sites. Strong enrollment potential. Convenient time zones. A predominantly Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking region.
All good reasons. All still true. Yet apparently, not enough. Latin America still represents a relatively small share of clinical trial activity worldwide.
So perhaps we’ve been looking at this the wrong way. Latin America has plenty to offer global clinical development. What’s changing now are the conditions that once made it easier to overlook.
There’s a temptation to describe the current growth in Latin American clinical research as a story of a region finally catching up. That gets it wrong.
Latin America has been contributing to sophisticated multinational trials for decades. Across Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and other markets, sponsors can find experienced principal investigators, mature research centers and the scientific expertise to deliver high-quality clinical research.
Previously, the problem wasn’t whether Latin America could do the work. It was how difficult the work could sometimes be to get going.
Long and unpredictable regulatory timelines. Customs and importation headaches. Logistics that demanded real local knowledge. Economic uncertainty in some markets. And perhaps something less tangible: the comfort of sponsors sticking with the geographies they already knew.
Brazil is a good example. After nearly a decade of legislative debate, the introduction of Clinical Research Law No. 14,874/2024 is creating a more predictable environment for sponsors. The reforms introduce defined review timelines, including ethics reviews within 30 business days and ANVISA reviews within 90, while simplifying ethics approvals. Brazil’s local ethics committee, known as the CEP, runs reviews in parallel with ANVISA to speed the process. They also establish a comprehensive national framework for the first time and bring Brazil into closer alignment with international Good Clinical Practice standards. Together, these reforms address many of the regulatory uncertainties that previously meant approval timelines could stretch towards a year.
Argentina offers another case in point. Regulatory and ethics processes can run in parallel, significantly reducing study start-up timelines. Successive reforms by ANMAT have streamlined approvals, modernized the regulatory framework and brought it into tighter alignment with international Good Clinical Practice standards. Together, these changes have reduced approval pathways from more than 160 working days under earlier procedures to 90 days, sometimes even less.
Has every regulatory challenge across Latin America disappeared? Of course not. But yesterday’s assumptions are starting to look increasingly out of date.
Across the region, there is greater alignment with international standards and growing recognition from governments that clinical research brings more than trials into a country. It brings investment, strengthens research capability and creates value for patients and healthcare systems.
For sponsors, the implication is simple. The perceived risk of including Latin America is falling. At what point does overlooking it become the greater risk?
Latin America isn’t a replacement for North America, Europe or Asia-Pacific. Why would it be? Global enrollment doesn’t happen neatly. Regions activate at different times and recruitment momentum shifts.
A geography coming online later can help sustain momentum when recruitment elsewhere is beginning to flatten. That’s where Latin America becomes interesting.
Substantial patient populations, experienced investigators and increasingly competitive start-up timelines can give sponsors another source of enrollment momentum and help keep multinational programs moving toward critical milestones. At the same time, Latin America can deliver diverse populations, which can be a competitive edge for the region.
For complex studies, that can matter enormously.
At Precision for Medicine, much of our work is in oncology, rare disease and autoimmune disorders. These are programs where the right patients and investigators can already be hard to find, and where the consequences of delays are often felt further along the development pathway.
The question isn’t what Latin America can stand in for. It’s what Latin America can add.
Today, approximately 40 Precision employees are based across Latin America, including our established operations in Costa Rica. By year-end, we expect that number to be closer to 60.
More revealing than the number is where we’re expanding our capabilities: clinical operations, trial management, logistics, drug safety, data engineering, and project and business support. These are experienced people who already understand how to make clinical research work in Latin America. We’re not importing expertise into the region. We’re tapping into talent that’s already here.
We’re also expanding the Precision Site Network across Latin America, connecting investigator sites in the region to a curated global network spanning more than 100 research centers across 15 countries. By giving sponsors faster access to experienced, pre-vetted sites, the network reduces friction around site selection, contracting and study start-up, enabling programs to move more efficiently from planning through First-Patient-In.
In many ways, our ability to grow is evidence of the wider point. Latin America has spent years building its clinical research expertise. Precision now has the opportunity to connect that local knowledge with our experience in complex global development. And that matters beyond simply getting a trial up and running.
For international sponsors, local execution must fit the wider development strategy. Evidence generated across regions has to support international regulatory objectives and ultimately contribute to a data package capable of taking a program forward globally.
It works the other way too. For life sciences companies emerging from Latin America, Precision can provide the global development and regulatory expertise to help promising programs move beyond their home markets.
The opportunity isn’t simply to bring more global trials into Latin America. It’s to bring more Latin American science to the world.
As DIA Latin America approaches, there will inevitably be plenty of discussion about the region’s potential. But perhaps potential isn’t quite the right word anymore.
The patients are here. The investigators are here. The expertise has been here all along. And the barriers that once kept global sponsors away are beginning to come down.
There is work still to do. Latin America isn’t one market and progress won’t happen everywhere at the same pace. But continuing to judge the region by assumptions formed five or ten years ago means judging a region that now only exists in the past.
Precision is investing because we see the opportunity, and because we believe our combination of local expertise and global development experience can help sponsors make more of it.
For years, the industry has been asking whether Latin America is ready for a bigger role in global clinical research. Maybe we’ve had it the wrong way round.
Has the rest of the world finally caught up with Latin America?