September 5, 2017 – Cancer Clinical Trials

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Anchor lead: Newer cancer therapy trials are having a hard time finding patients, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Immunotherapy is the most promising avenue for cancer treatment, with new agents being developed rapidly. But getting enough people to test them on has proven very challenging, a recent report states, and that may hamper efforts to get them into widespread clinical use. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, agrees.

Nelson: Some of these new immunotherapy maneuvers are starting to work, they’re not working for nearly enough people so we know they’re going to have to be used in combinations, we’re going to have to evaluate which of these combinations are more effective than others. This means that participating in clinical trials there’s a very high chance to derive some benefit, as the benefit gets higher, we have to be able to deliver more than 4-6% of adults onto these clinical trials. You have to worry about the barriers to participation that are now becoming barriers to higher quality care.   :32

Nelson encourages anyone diagnosed with cancer to investigate clinical trials. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.