A Trial for Every Patient and a Patient for Every Trial

Clinical trials can be less reflective of the general population with cancer, due to the exclusion of those with certain comorbidities. The use of expanded clinical trial inclusion criteria would nearly double the percentage of patients eligible to enroll in clinical trials, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and Friends of Cancer Research.

The researchers drew this conclusion based on a study that examined the health records of over 10,000 patients with advanced non—small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) from ASCO’s CancerLinQ database.

Allowing for expanded clinical trial access and expanding eligibility criteria would permit patients with advanced NSCLC and brain metastases, HIV, previous or concurrent cancers and limited kidney function to enroll in clinical trials.

At the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, R. Donald Harvey, an associate professor of hematology, pharmacology and medical oncology and the director of the Phase 1 Clinical Trials Unit at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, spoke about the benefits and drawbacks of expanding clinical trials to be more inclusive and reflective of the general patient population.