Are Clinical Trials Too Risky? A Lung Cancer Expert Reviews the Facts.

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Are Clinical Trials Too Risky? A Lung Cancer Expert Reviews the Facts. from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Some patients fear that clinical trials may be too experimental and risky. Dr. Martin Edelman outlines the clinical trial process and addresses myths surrounding trials. Want to learn more? Download the Program Resource Guide here.

Dr. Martin J. Edelman is Chair of the Department of Hematology/Oncology and Deputy Director for Clinical Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center. More about this expert here.

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Transcript:

Patricia:

Here’s the last one that I have on my list here. Clinical trials are experimental and risky.

Dr. Edelman:

Yeah. Well, so is the rest of life. So, there generally – is there risk? Yes. Essentially, every patient is always a trial because we for the most part don’t – even in the disease states where we have very active treatment – so, let’s say – for example, we were talking about the EGFR mutation. So, we have excellent drugs. We have a drug now, osimertinib – outstanding drug, easy to take, low risk of side effects.

The earlier generations – there was a lot of rash, diarrhea. That’s been pretty much done away with. But on average, patients benefit from this drug for about a year and a half.

So, that’s not great if you’re 40 or 50 years old. You want to do better. So, what are our current studies? Well, we’re looking – we’re re-addressing a question that we thought had been answered, but really it wasn’t – about, well, what’s the value of chemotherapy plus this drug? What about the value of other drugs?

So, we can’t promise anybody anything, but our current treatments are still not good enough. There are certain diseases, let’s say Hodgkin’s disease, where you know you’re gonna cure almost all the patients up front or testicular cancer, etcetera, where – again, but thanks to trials, clinical trials, we now are at that stage. We’re not there yet in lung cancer, and the reality is is every patient should really be on a study. I think it’s – and we have this problem now in that our studies have also become far more complicated to enter people in because there are many more variables one has to look at it. What’s the molecular background of the tumor? How many prior therapies?

The condition of the patient, their organ function, etcetera – and the regulatory burden has become much, much greater. But clinical patients are in clinical trials. Let’s look at the question. Are they risky? Well, everything is risky, but we do a lot to manage that risk. Patients who are in studies are observed more closely. We have to. It’s the law. There’s frequently additional personnel assigned. They’re usually getting standard of care plus a new treatment or a new treatment followed by the standard of care or some variation of that.

They’re observed, like I said, much more carefully than we would otherwise. And so, I think actually patients on trials generally will do better, and we actually have evidence. Multiple individuals have looked at this – everything from first-in-man trials or early dose escalation studies, controlled studies – that show that patients, even those on the control arm, generally do better than similar types of patients who are not treated on studies because we just are more careful.

And the physician who participates in trials is generally someone who has a greater knowledge of the disease.

Trustworthy Resources to Help You Learn More About Lung Cancer

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Trustworthy Resources to Help You Learn More About Lung Cancer from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Expert Dr. Martin Edelman shares credible resources to help lung cancer patients become informed and empowered.

Dr. Martin J. Edelman is Chair of the Department of Hematology/Oncology and Deputy Director for Clinical Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center. More about this expert here.

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Transcript:

Patricia:

Let’s talk a little bit about health literacy. What would you suggest patients use for online resources? What are good resources?

Dr. Edelman:

So, there are some excellent resources. The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer has resources for patients. The National Coalition of Comprehensive Cancer Center Network (NCCN) has resources. American Society of Clinical Oncology has resources. So, those or American Cancer Society. So, there are some really reliable sources out there. And there’s a great deal that’s very unreliable – people’s Facebook pages. I’ve seen this.

Patricia:

It’s a big place.

Dr. Edelman:

Everybody always – and I think it’s important for people to understand. There will be people who will get something and have a fantastic response. I’ve used anecdotes.

The anecdotes I’ve used are to illustrate the potential hope of benefit. They’re not exceptions to the rule anymore. They’re the good case scenarios. I could have just as many anecdotes of people who didn’t benefit and stuff. And I think it is important going into this – and that’s why we are reassessing patients constantly and getting repeat scans because we don’t necessarily know always – even if something’s 90 percent effective, it means 10 percent of the time it’s not.

And each patient – we’re getting better at individualizing and personalizing therapy, but we’re not perfect yet. And we probably never will be. So, there will always be anecdotes. I think what’s – as a friend of mine puts it – the plural of anecdotes is not data. When I say, “Well, chemoimmunotherapy works.” It’s not because I have anecdotes of that, though anecdotes illustrate the magnitude of benefit.

I have data that shows that the chemoimmunotherapy regimen was compared to chemotherapy and was clearly and unequivocally superior. When I give a statistic that 60 percent of patients, 65 percent, can benefit from those types of regimens. That’s based upon prospective randomized control trials.

Could Advances in Lung Cancer Research Benefit You?

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Could Advances in Lung Cancer Research Benefit You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Expert Dr. Martin Edelman reviews the latest lung cancer research and explains how it may impact patient care. Want to learn more? Download the Program Resource Guide here.

Dr. Martin J. Edelman is Chair of the Department of Hematology/Oncology and Deputy Director for Clinical Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center. More about this expert here.

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Transcript:

Patricia:

Let’s start with an overview of lung cancer’s research. Can you tell us a little bit about the field right now?

Dr. Edelman:

So, I think the field has been remarkable over the last few years. There’s been more progress, more drugs, more things that have happened in the last five years than probably the prior 50. It’s been an amazing time both for developments in microbiology as well as in immunotherapy of the disease, which is exciting for all concerned.

For patient’s, of course – really a promise of longer, better lives, even cures where we previously did not see any in advanced disease. For the scientists – an amazing amount of new information. And for clinicians and clinical investigators – just almost too many questions for us to answer.

Patricia:

It sounds like the field is really advancing quickly. What do you attribute that to?

Dr. Edelman:

Well, you know, I think there are a number of things. Everybody always talks about breakthroughs, but breakthroughs really happen after decades of other work. And what’s happening now is really a result of many, many years of different types of work. There were our colleagues in immunology who built this area of cancer immunology for many years – I have to say with much skepticism from many, myself included.

The advances in molecular biology – our abilities to do things with tumors to determine genetics at a rate and a pace and a cost that was previously unimaginable. All of these things have developed in the last few years but really are a result of the decades of work before that. If you look at immunotherapy – probably one of our biggest areas of progress – the roots of that are a century old. So, nothing’s really new. It’s just now we have the technology and the ability to really use it. And then I would also say that we’ve created the infrastructure that lets us test this – the people who have done the studies, the endpoints for the studies, the expertise in doing clinical trials – that also was there for decades, and we frequently were kind of ridiculed at times.

Oh, you’re just testing this drug against that drug, but the reality is is it was those incremental advances. It was the ability to know the endpoints, to refine the populations, to develop the infrastructure that allowed for all of this to happen.

Patricia:

Dr. Edelman, as a researcher in the field, tell us why you’re hopeful about lung cancer research.

Dr. Edelman:

Well, I think that we have gone from trials with very small incremental improvements and frequently a very slow degree of progress where if we had a positive study every two or three years, we were thrilled – to the point where we’ve had an avalanche of positive studies. I don’t think my younger colleagues know what a negative trial looks like anymore. Even our negative trials are pretty impressive. We’ve had studies where an immunotherapy agent was compared with chemotherapy. And it was designed to show that the drug would be better.

And it was just as good, and that was a negative study. That’s the correct interpretation, but still I would point out that that’s quite remarkable because these other drugs had taken us 25-30 years to develop. And now we have another drug with a very different mechanism of action that’s as good potentially. That’s impressive. I think we’ve just had an amazing degree of progress in the last few years. We have far more drugs. We understand far more about the disease – the technology at every point from diagnosis to assessment of response to the ability to evaluate better what we’re not doing well. So, our studies now frequently have biopsies before, during, and after treatment in a way of trying to figure out why is stuff working or not working.

Back in 2006 or so, I proposed a study. We ended up doing it, but it took two or three years because we were requiring a biopsy result – actually, not even a new biopsy but just an archived specimen from the original biopsy to determine eligibility, and there was strong pushback that we would never be able to do that. And now, we routinely are getting biopsies and re-biopsying, and that’s over a brief period of time.

So, we’re getting to get better understanding of the disease, and why stuff works and doesn’t work. And I think that that’s why our progress will accelerate. And I would again emphasize progress only happens – real progress – only through clinical trials. We’ve cured a lot of mice for many decades. A mouse is not a person. You actually have to do the studies patient by patient, and I think we are making substantial progress. We almost have too many things to test right now.