Creating a Patient Trial Community

When TJ Sharpe was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma in August 2012, his future looked bleak. He was 37 years old with two young children, the median lifespan for patients with his diagnosis was 18 months and treatment options were limited.Thanks to some knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry he soon realised his best chance of survival was to find a clinical trial. It was a daunting prospect, but his resolve was solid and, after undergoing six surgical operations and four immunotherapy treatments across two different clinical trials, he lived to tell the tale.“I was lucky,” says Sharpe, “I was aware of clinical trials thanks to my experience in the pharmaceutical industry as a young project manager. I wanted the best chance to live, I wanted to see my family grow up. So, I did my homework and realised there were other options out there for me.” He now sees it as his responsibility to help other patients through their own cancer journeys and has long advocated for the complicated clinical trials landscape to be modernised.  “Many patients have great difficulty finding a suitable trial and are therefore denied life-saving treatment,” he says. “Information is often scattered across numerous different registries, exclusion/inclusion criteria is hard to understand, and there is so much complicated medical language.”Janssen shares Sharpe ’s desire to modernise the trials process. The Janssen Global Clinical Trial Community initiative aims to help patients gain ...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news