The Central IRB (CIRB) Initiative is designed to help reduce the administrative burden on local IRBs and investigators while continuing a high level of protection for human research participants. 

A local IRB's use of the CIRB facilitated review mechanism enables an investigator to enroll patients into adult and pediatric Cooperative Group clinical trials significantly faster than when employing traditional method of IRB review.  

The CIRB Initiative is sponsored by NCI in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP).