Increasing Access and Participation to Early Phase Clinical Trials

Access to health care including clinical trials leading to paradigm-changing cancer treatments is critical for high quality cancer care. Compared to later phase clinical trials, early phase trials are more complicated but are pivotal in the development of novel and more effective therapies. Participation into early phase clinical trials is often the only way a patient can access potentially effective novel therapies not yet available commercially. There is evidence of direct medical benefit, improvement of quality of life, and achievement of psychological benefit in early phase trials. In this project, Dr. Baranda will continue to lead in the development of sustainable and intentional strategies to enhance access and increase participation to early phase Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network (ETCTN) clinical trials for patients including the veterans using a roadmap University of Kansas Cancer Center (KUCC) built from lessons learned from the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored clinical trials using our research infrastructure we use in later phase trials. Implementation of more rigorous analysis of areas of unmet needs, efficiency in ETCTN clinical trial for timely activation, trial selection and prioritization, and engagement of physicians throughout our catchment area will continue to be adopted in this project. A project for efficient workflow in genomic characterization of patient tumors will allow identification of patients appropriate for biomarker-driven ETCTN precision medicine clinical trials. KUCC will lead the Enrolment-Focused Clinical Investigators Team within the ETCTN UM1 consortium through exchange of novel approaches among ETCTN sites and ensuring the use of pragmatic approach in clinical trial design to prevent unnecessary burden to patients and minimize load to the clinical trials operations in ETCTN.