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Sherry Whitaker will always be remembered for her attitude of service, courage and faith. Her family and friends were inspired to create a run with one goal and purpose:…
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February is Clinical Trials Awareness Month Feb 18, 2010
Did you know that clinical trials are the best management of oncology patient care? Now more than ever, patients are able to access trials in their own local communities. In this video, David Spigel, M.D., discusses the importance of clinical trials for individuals and for advancing cancer treatment for the future.
Clinical Trial Research with Dr. David Spigel Transcript
Research is really the corner stone in cancer. All the treatments that we have now, and there are many, that are on our shelves in the offices and hospital - all of those treatments are there because of research. At some point, it could have been a year ago or it could have been 20-30 years ago, those drugs were new and we didn't know if they were going to work in fighting cancer much less treating infections.
Only by testing those therapies in this paradigm in what is called clinical research, by studying how those drugs work in patients - not in a test tube and not in an animal but in patients - have we come to understand what works and what doesn't work.
The spirit of research is find a better therapy for a patient and to try to offer what may be a new and better therapy. One thing that maybe gets swept under the rug is what you are doing when you participate in a research study, we hope that you benefit from it. We wouldn't want you not to benefit from a therapy. But in truth, that study is going to take many years to find out whether Treatment A or Treatment B is better. And what you are doing is hopefully helping yourself, but you are helping generations of people behind you who one day may come into a doctor's office and find out that they have lung cancer and their doctor says, "You can receive Treatment B now." It is now standard and approved - and that is because that drug got approved and it was proven to be better than Treatment A.
But by and large, your oncologist should be able to give you information about how you could get access to something that would be a clinical research program either at your center or somewhere nearby. And if it requires resources such as financial or transportation, often there are programs in place or foundations that can help with your transition to an environment where you can get access to research.