Clinical trials test for safety and effectiveness of promising experimental medicines, devices, and approaches for healthy living.
Without clinical research and trials, there would be no new and better cancer drugs, screening technologies, or preventive strategies approved for patients and healthy people.
But new and better therapies in cancer care are not coming soon enough and too few lab discoveries ever become new cancer treatments. Among the reasons driving this unfortunate and unacceptable reality are these:
- Costs to conduct clinical trials are typically extremely high
- Low patient pool populations for relatively low-prevalence cancers extend study time periods, sometimes by many years
- Many cancer patients are not aware of available clinical trials
- Cancer patients may be apprehensive about participating in clinical trials due to multiple reasons, including fear of the unknown or lack of guidance and support
- Unpleasant side effects of clinical trials—as also in standard of care treatments—commonly causes non-compliance with drug schedules, delaying study completions
Cancer clinical trials are expensive and insufficient numbers of patients know about or fully enroll and complete their participation in them. A particularly vicious cycle begins because these high costs and delays caused by a lack of patients prevent drug developers and investors from pursuing new drugs.
But the National Foundation for Cancer Research is helping to make cancer clinical trials more efficient, lowering overall costs and maximizing patient participation.
NFCR-Supported Clinical Trial Programs
NFCR supports the innovative “adaptive” glioblastoma clinical trial, GBM AGILE—which is not only offering hope to patients of the deadliest form of brain cancer but also serving as an experimental treatment studies precedent for other diseases—cancer or otherwise!
Adaptive trials are designed to be regularly updated. Ineffective treatments can be stopped early in order to be replaced with effective treatments. The goal of GBM AGILE is to allow brain cancer patients to quickly share in the benefits of more effective therapies, taking advantage of what some of them do not have: time.
NFCR is funding multiple ongoing clinical trial programs, including for liver cancer, oral cancer and one for multiple solid tumors.
The potentially life-saving cancer drug and drug combinations under clinical review have been researched, developed and otherwise associated with programs and laboratories funded and led by our organization. We’re confident in the impact each could have for patients and their families.
NFCR is making it easier for people worldwide to discover and qualify for clinical trials.
Through the Research for a Cure Patient Hub, individuals are guided through the entire clinical trial process. From searching and qualifying for a trial, to step-by-step support throughout the study, patients have the support and tools they need to feel empowered in their journey through clinical trials.
