A parent ’s guide to clinical trials

Children with life-threatening conditions, such as cancer, are often candidates for clinical trials. What are they? Which factors should parents weigh in determining whether enrolling in one is a good option for their child? Dr. Steven DuBois, director of the Advancing Childhood Cancer Therapies Clinic at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, answers questions about clinical trials. What are clinical trials? Why are they important? Clinical trials are systematic, scientific investigations of new drugs or therapies for a specific disease. Through clinical trials, we have taken many fatal pediatric cancers and turned them into diseases that now have cure rates of over 90 percent. Although we still want to improve those cure rates, research is now increasingly focused on making treatments more tolerable and reducing late effects of therapy. In other pediatric cancers, we are not doing as well, so our goal is to improve cure rates for patients with a poor prognosis. After decades of focusing on various chemotherapy agents and combinations to improve outcomes, much of today’s  focus is on precision medicine, immunotherapies and other novel approaches that we hope will deliver less toxic and more effective treatment than chemotherapy. What is a Phase 1 trial? Phase 2? Phase 3? When we hear about a new drug or combination that has not yet been tested in children but shows promise in laboratory research or adult trials, we must first determine the best...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Ask the Expert Research and Innovation clinical trial Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center Dr. Steven DuBois Source Type: news