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.
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.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/Trustworthy-Resources-to-Help-You-Learn-More-About-Lung-Cancer-1.png600600Kara Rayburnhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngKara Rayburn2019-12-12 16:16:092020-02-10 10:05:05Trustworthy Resources to Help You Learn More About Lung Cancer
When it comes to cancer treatment you or a loved one may be considering participating in a clinical trial as a treatment option. Clinical trials are designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a treatment. They may involve researchers administering drugs, taking blood or tissue samples, or checking the progress of patients as they take a treatment according to a study’s protocol.
Learning about clinical trials can be a steep learning curve – not least because the process comes with a lot of new terms, acronyms and jargon. To help you, I’ve put together this list of the most common terms you will find when you are researching clinical trial information. This is not an exhaustive list but it is a helpful starting point. At the end of this article you will see links to find more information.
Adverse Effects (AE)
Also called Adverse Events, or Adverse Drug Reaction, AEs are any harmful event experienced by a person while they are having a drug or any other treatment or intervention. In clinical trials, researchers must always report adverse events, regardless of whether or not the event is suspected to be related to or caused by the drug, treatment or intervention.
Arm
Subsection of people within a study who have a particular intervention.
Bias
Bias is an error that distorts the objectivity of a study. It can arise if a researcher doesn’t adhere to rigorous standards in designing the study, selecting the subjects, administering the treatments, analysing the data, or reporting and interpreting the study results. It can also result from circumstances beyond a researcher’s control, as when there is an uneven distribution of some characteristic between groups as a result of randomization.
Blinding
Blinding is a method of controlling for bias in a study by ensuring that those involved are unable to tell if they are in an intervention or control group so they cannot influence the results. In a single-blind study, patients do not know whether they are receiving the active drug or a placebo. In a double-blind study, neither the patients nor the persons administering the treatments know which patients are receiving the active drug. In a triple-blind study, the patients, clinicians/researchers and the persons evaluating the results do not know which treatment patients had. Whenever blinding is used, there will always be a method in which the treatment can be unblinded in the event that information is required for safety.
Comparator
When a treatment for a specific medical condition already exists, it would be unethical to do a randomized controlled trial that would require some participants to be given an ineffective substitute. In this case, new treatments are tested against the best existing treatment, (i.e. a comparator). The comparator can also be no intervention (for example, best supportive care).
Completed
A trial is considered completed when trial participants are no longer being examined or treated (i.e. no longer in follow-up); the database has been ‘locked’ and records have been archived.
Control
A group of people in a study who do not have the intervention or test being studied. Instead, they may have the standard intervention (sometimes called ‘usual care’) or a dummy intervention (placebo). The results for the control group are compared with those for a group having the intervention being tested. The aim is to check for any differences. The people in the control group should be as similar as possible to those in the intervention group, to make it as easy as possible to detect any effects due to the intervention.
Efficacy
How beneficial a treatment is under ideal conditions (for example, in a laboratory), compared with doing nothing or opting for another type of care. A drug passes efficacy trials if it is effective at the dose tested and against the illness for which it is prescribed.
Eligibility Criteria/ Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
Eligibility criteria ensures patients enrolling in a clinical trial share similar characteristics (e.g. gender, age, medications, disease type and status) so that the results of the study are more likely due to the treatment received rather than other factors.
Follow-up
Observation over a period of time of participants enrolled in a trial to observe changes in health status.
Informed Consent
A process (by means of a written informed consent form) by which a participant voluntarily agrees to take part in a trial, having been informed of the possible benefits, risks and side effects associated with participating in the study.
Intervention
The treatment (e.g., a drug, surgical procedure, or diagnostic test) being researched. The intervention group consists of the study participants that have been randomly assigned to receive the treatment.
Investigator
A person responsible for the conduct of the clinical trial at a trial site. If a trial is conducted by a team of individuals at a trial site, the investigator is the responsible leader of the team and may be called the principal investigator (PI).
Multicentre Trial
A clinical trial conducted according to a single protocol but at more than one site, and therefore, carried out by more than one investigator.
Number needed to treat (NNT)
The average number of patients who need to receive the treatment or other intervention for one of them to get the positive outcome in the time specified.
Outcome Measures
The impact that a test, treatment, or other intervention has on a person, group or population.
Phase I, II, III and IV Studies
Once the safety of a new drug has been demonstrated in tests on animals, it goes through a multi-phase testing process to determine its safety and efficacy in treating human patients. If a drug shows success in one phase, the evaluation moves to the next phase
Phase 1 tests a drug on a very small number of healthy volunteers to establish overall safety, identify side effects, and determine the dose levels that are safe and tolerable for humans.
Phase II trials test a drug on a small number of people who have the condition the drug is designed to treat. These trials are done to establish what dose range is most effective, and to observe any safety concerns that might arise.
Phase III trials test a drug on a large number of people who have the condition the drug is designed to treat. Successful completion of Phase III is the point where the drug is considered ready to be marketed.
Phase IV trials can investigate uses of the drug for other conditions, on a broader patient base or for longer term use.
Placebo
A fake (or dummy) treatment given to patients in the control group of a clinical trial. Placebos are indistinguishable from the actual treatment and used so that the subjects in the control group are unable to tell who is receiving the active drug or treatment. Using placebos prevents bias in judging the effects of the medical intervention being tested.
Population
A group of people with a common link, such as the same medical condition or living in the same area or sharing the same characteristics. The population for a clinical trial is all the people the test or treatment is designed to help.
Protocol
A plan or set of steps that defines how something will be done. Before carrying out a research study, for example, the research protocol sets out what question is to be answered and how information will be collected and analysed.
Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT)
A study in which a number of similar people are randomly assigned to 2 (or more) groups to test a specific drug, treatment or other intervention. One group has the intervention being tested; the other (the comparison or control group) has an alternative intervention, a placebo, or no intervention at all. Participants are assigned to different groups without taking any similarities or differences between them into account. For example, it could involve using a computer-generated random sequence. RCTs are considered the most unbiased way of assessing the outcome of an intervention because each individual has the same chance of having the intervention.
Reliability
The ability to get the same or similar result each time a study is repeated with a different population or group.
Sample
People in a study recruited from part of the study’s target population. If they are recruited in an unbiased way, the results from the sample can be generalised to the target population as a whole.
Subjects
In clinical trials, the people selected to take part are called subjects. The term applies to both those participants receiving the treatment being investigated and to those receiving a placebo or alternate treatment.
Trial Site
The location where trial-related activities are conducted.
A Stanford Medicine X e-Patient scholar, Marie Ennis O’Connor is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, writer, and consultant on global trends in patient engagement, digital health and participatory medicine. A board member of the Patient Empowerment Foundation, a network of people, foundations, organizations and medical institutions dedicated to empowering patients worldwide, Marie’s work is informed by her passion for embedding the patient voice at the heart of healthcare values. She writes about the experience of transitioning from breast cancer patient to advocate on her award-winning blog Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer.
This video was originally published by Cancer.gov on September 3, 2019, here.
Paying for Clinical Trials
Find a Clinical Trial
Learn about the different types of costs related to taking part in a clinical trial, and who is expected to pay for which costs.
As you think about taking part in a clinical trial, you will face the issue of how to cover the costs of care. There are two types of costs associated with a clinical trial: patient care costs and research costs.
Patient care costs are those costs related to treating your cancer, whether you are in a trial or receiving standard therapy. These costs are often covered by health insurance. They include:
Doctor visits
Hospital stays
Standard cancer treatments
Treatments to reduce or eliminate symptoms of cancer or side effects from treatment
Lab tests
X-rays and other imaging tests
Research costs are those related to taking part in the trial. Often these costs are not covered by health insurance, but they may be covered by the trial’s sponsor. Examples include:
The study drug
Lab tests performed purely for research purposes
Additional x-rays and imaging tests performed solely for the trial
When you take part in a trial, you may have extra doctor visits that you would not have with standard treatment. During these visits your doctor carefully watches for side effects and your safety in the study. These extra visits can add costs for transportation and child care.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/1-9.png600600PEN Editorial Staffhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngPEN Editorial Staff2019-10-02 08:32:252019-10-02 08:32:25Paying for Clinical Trials
Three experts discuss the clinical trial process and the difficulty in participating in a trial. Our expert panel includes:
Ken Getz, MBA – Founder and Board Chair, CISCRP
Andy Lee – Senior Vice President and Head, Global Clinical Trial Operations, Merck
T.J. Sharpe – Melanoma Survivor and Patient Advocate
Transcript:
Andrew Schorr:
And greetings from Southern California. I’m Andrew Schorr from Patient Power. And welcome to this Patient Empowerment Network program, another in our series of Clinical Trials MythBusters. Our goal, of course, is to help you get the treatment for you or a loved one that you need and deserve. I want to thank the financial supporters for this program to the Patient Empowerment Network; AbbVie, Inc., Celgene Corporation. Daiichi Sankyo and Novartis for their support. They have no editorial control and we’re going to have a very freewheeling discussion today. And really what it’s about is how can a clinical trial be made easier for you to participate? Are there barriers? We’ve talked about it in previous programs. But specifically, what are the companies—the pharmaceutical industry mostly, who sponsor trials all around the world, what are they doing to make trial participation easier? For you to know about trials. For the people at your clinic to know about it and what to say and how to administer it. For you to have documents that are understandable for you and your family to know whether you want to participate. To keep you informed. And also related to the requirements of trials. How can they be relaxed a little so that there may be a trial that would benefit you, that you and your doctor agree on, and the requirements of it allow you to be in the trial. Okay, and the logistics of it are not so tough either. All right, I’ve been in two clinical trials, and I believe I’m alive today because of that. So, I’m very grateful. We have some wonderful panelists with us over the next hour. Now as you have questions, send them to questions@patientpower.info. And some of you have. So, you’ll be able to interact with us as we go along. First, I want to go to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and T.J Sharpe. And T.J. has been on programs with me over the years. Stage four melanoma patient having been in trials. And T. J., you would agree, you’re alive today because you were in trials, right?
T.J. Sharpe:
Absolutely, Andrew. I think both of us are very fortunate that we found a trial that was the right treatment for us and gave us the ability to combat our disease in areas may not have been available to us if we just waited for standard of care therapies.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. And here you are—we should say that you were diagnosed a number of years ago with melanoma, went through trials. And now you’ve had two years without treatment, right?
T.J. Sharpe:
Yes. It’s been five years of treatment followed by now two good years of a clean bill of health.
Andrew Schorr:
Well, great. And I should mention for our audience, many people are familiar with T.J. T.J. goes around the country, gives speeches. He’s been at many events, consults with industry that are developing trials to try to bring the patient perspective forward. So, T.J., thank you for all you do. We really appreciate it.
T.J. Sharpe:
You’re welcome. It’s my honor to be able to represent all these patients.
Andrew Schorr:
Well, most every family—certainly most have been touched by cancer. But our other guests are not cancer patients but are in national leadership programs. And so, let’s go up to Medford, Massachusetts at Tufts University outside Boston, Ken Getz. Ken, welcome to the program. Ken, ladies and gentlemen, is a true national leader when it comes to clinical trials and really helping us move forward with better processes, better understanding. Ken, tell us a little bit about your organization there, CISCRP. What does that stand for?
Ken Getz:
Thank you. And I have to say your pronunciation was nearly perfect. It’s hard to pronounce it. It’s an acronym and it stands for The Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation. It’s a non-profit organization. It was founded 18 years ago. And it’s really there to help patients and their families navigate the whole clinical research progress which for many is completely unfamiliar terrain until they’ve been diagnosed with an illness or when they have exhausted all other treatment options. So, CISCRP really helps people become more educated and informed so that they can really think of the clinical research process with more confidence. And they can navigate this unknown terrain.
Andrew Schorr:
All right. I’m going to come back to you in a minute because you have such an overview, and you’re also an Associate Professor at Tufts. And so, you study all this, and you’ve written books. But I want to introduce the third guest. And that is a leader from the pharmaceutical industry and one of our most respected and venerable companies in the field, and this is Merck. So, joining us in a senior vice president of clinical operations there around the world. And that’s Andy Lee. Andy, welcome. Thank you so much for being with us.
Andy Lee:
Andrew, thank you. And pleasure to be with some prestigious panelists, both of whom I know. And I’ve met you over the last two weeks. And thank you to T.J. and yourself who have been trial participants and who are representing that part of the organization.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay, and we should mention that both T.J. and Andy are working on a couple of levels. And Ken sounds off on this too. There is a group called TransCelerate where pharmaceutical industry is working together on some of the issues they face in having the proliferation of trials. More trials sites, more accessibility, procedures for that. And then, of course, Andy has helped lead that effort at Merck related to breakthrough therapies that they have been trying to develop there in supporting patients who might be in Merck trials. So, we are going to come back to that. But I want to go to you for a second, Ken. Ken, how low is the participation among adults in clinical trials, at least in the U.S. Now, I’ve heard really low percentages. Where are we now with that?
Ken Getz:
Right, it’s a great myth for us to start with, this notion that only three to five percent of patients—eligible patients, participate in clinical research. That’s actually a statistic that was published by the National Cancer Institute in the early 1990’s. The latest research really shows that it varies widely. For example, when we look at pediatric cancers, the participation rates are extremely high, 80 to 90 percent in same cases—pediatric leukemia. In part because those communities have very engaged healthcare providers, very engaged families that really share their information. It’s just an enabled community where all of the stakeholders support participation. And then there are other areas of course. Some cancers where we do see relatively low participation rates. But I want to point out that low participation is driven by so many factors, Andy, including the strict eligibility criteria. And the demanding protocol designs which are a real burden for some people, and they choose not to participate. As well as low awareness, very low accessibility to trials among minorities and underserved communities. So, there are many factors that contribute to this variation in the participation rates.
Andrew Schorr:
Yeah, you’ve ticked off some now. T.J., in your own experience, one of the breakthrough trials you were in you had to go from Ft. Lauderdale in South Florida and move your whole family to Tampa in central Florida, right. I mean that was a big deal.
T.J. Sharpe:
Absolutely. When you have a young family and a stage four cancer diagnosis, relocating simply across the state during the holidays especially, is no big deal. We were fortunate because we had the means to be able to move there with work situation, with family. But too many people can barely go across the county, much less the state or the country to find a trial that might be the best match for them.
Andrew Schorr:
Andy, so we’ve ticked off some of the obstacles, and Ken touched on some about even the proliferation of trials. Is that a lot of what you do is how can we have trials be more accessible, be more widely distributed to a clinic near you?
Andy Lee:
Yes, let me just explain. When we look at a new cancer therapy, we look at the various cancers that may be affected. And what we do is we go for high probabilities of success. And the challenge is if you bring a new cancer agent. You normally start off in very advanced disease. So, patients would have failed multiple lines of therapy, and often it is a last gasp. And you have to show some sort of clinical efficacy. And then you move sort of backwards in the disease, and you go from sort of third-plus line, second line and first line.
And then you may work downwards into earlier stages of the disease into an adjuvant setting and maybe a neoadjuvant setting. So, as we sit down and design a trial, what we need to look at is what is the population that is most likely to show any benefit at all. And quite often when you are developing a new therapy, it’s difficult to show benefit because many of the patients are very ill. So, what we have to do is optimize the opportunity for success of a compound by going to the right target patients.
And quite often as we have learned a lot more about cancer, this does not mean we test a product broadly in anyone with cancer. We typically try and find a profile of a patient that is likely to respond. And many patients now will realize their predictor biomarkers or prognostic biomarkers. So, for example, with immunotherapies, those that work through the PD1 mechanism would probably want to have a PD1 ligand receptor positive patient who is likely to bind to the drug.
And that gives a higher probability of success. So, it sounds counterintuitive that while we want to develop therapies for all cancer patients, when we start clinical trial development, we have to show efficacy in a population that will benefit. And that’s normally predefined and makes the inclusion criteria fairly strict. As we show efficacy and as we can move into broader populations, it makes it a lot easier for us to design more liberal clinical trials. And then we can actually spread those in the geographic domains.
I could talk more about geographic allocation, but let’s hold that for the time being, and let’s see if there’s time later on.
Ken Getz:
Can I just add to what Andy said because I think it’s really important for your viewers to understand just how active drug development activity is today. We’re looking at over 4,000 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, some of them very, very small. But in total, we’re looking at nearly 6,000 drugs that are in active clinical trials. And to Andy’s point, many are really targeting a patient with a very specific genetic profile or a specific biomarker. But it should give anyone who believes that a clinical trial may be an important care option for them, they should recognize that there may be many, many trials out there.
In total we estimate as many as 80,000 clinical trials, nearly 50 just conducted in the U.S. alone—50,000. So, it’s just important that we keep all this activity in perspective.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. So, T.J., that’s why all of us as patients need to ask about them, right? Go to different resources, whether it’s an advocacy group that you ultimately spoke with other patients, and obviously quizzing the doctors we go to. Is there something that may line up with my situation, right T.J.?
T.J. Sharpe:
Absolutely. There is a both top down and bottom up approach here that patients as they become educated—and every patient should be the owner of their healthcare as they become educated. Hopefully they are coming across advocacy organizations, other informed patients, patient support groups—all of which will help inform them different options for disease treatment, including hopefully as Ken mentioned, clinical research as a care option. At the same time, there is certainly very much an opportunity from the top down from the sponsors who develop the trials and from the sites that execute them to educate patients as they come in.
Not just at their own site, but at any site, at any medical facility. That if you have a diagnosis and you are looking into your care options, that you should be asking the question. And we should be giving you more information on the possibility of clinical trials and where you may find clinical trials that are appropriate for you.
Andrew Schorr:
Right, the whole enchilada, if you will, of all your options. Andy, so you mentioned about trial requirements. So, first of all, what efforts either at Merck or are you aware in the industry are being made to really talk to patients early on as you are designing trials? Whether it’s the requirements—how many CT scans you’re going to have. How often you are going to have to go to the main trial site. All the different things that sometimes get in the way.
Andy Lee:
Well, firstly we start with design. And we believe in exquisite trial design, quality by design as well. So, what we want is to run the experiment once and not have a sloppy trial design. We want to make it really robust in terms of scientific integrity and operational execution. So, we have a lot of internal design committees and what we do is we co-op with many groups external to our company. So, we speak to people who run clinical trials at cancer institutes.
We speak to the doctors who manage this. We speak to the trial coordinators. We speak to people involved with the transporting and shipping of medicine how they would do that. And then we of course speak to people in the ecosystem. We quite often speak to investigational review boards before we start trials. We talk to them about our design and what would be best to protect the rights and well-being of patients. And then, of course, the patient-centric approach says that we need patient insights.
And I’ve chosen my words very carefully because the insights are really important. Not all patients—and I’m very respectful that some patients are very intelligent and actually may be involved in this. Some patients can contribute to design, not all can. And so, what we do is we take the insights and we impute those. We often have focus groups. We talk about this disease. We talk about the burden of the disease. And then we talk about how that disease is managed in an ecosystem. And quite often in different countries it’s managed differently.
And so, we have to appreciate the global clinical trials have to navigate a path that may not be a linear path as we’d see it at an exquisite elite cancer center in the United States. It’s community-based, it’s all the rest. So, we take that input, and what we try to do is unburden the trial for the patient. We say, “How can we design a trial that requires the least visits to the clinic—the hospital, the least burden for them. And how can we take some of that burden from the clinic and actually transfer that into an easier environment.
So, document reading and review. Perhaps filling in questionnaires about quality of life. These are things that don’t have to be done in the clinic itself. And then often when we work with clinics, we work with them to help them understand how we as sponsors can make their life easier. And some of those things might be simplifying the informed consent. But I want to stress just one point here is that we can do whatever we like in the design at a company.
One of the things is, the patients are not sponsor patients. Okay, we sponsor clinical trials. The patients are managed by a doctor and a professional. And underneath that principal investigator is a whole oncology team. And it involves radiology. It involves pharmacists. It revolves around a 360 multidisciplinary team. They’re exquisite. They help manage the patient, not the sponsor. We provide the enabling functions for them. And then also that the oversight of the patient’s right, safety and wellbeing is the responsibility of an institutional review board.
And while we may provide templates and simplify templates in text and language, we rely heavily on the institutional review boards to help us with things that may make things easier, such as reimbursement for parking, transport, all of these things. And by and large, the institutional review boards are very supportive of these things. But they are very difficult to quantify in exact terms because of different geographic regions and different norms in different places. So, we rely heavily on exquisitely well-trained 360 team who manages oncology patients with a great PI. They manage patients.
And we work collaboratively with the sites who work with patients on our behalf. So, I just wanted to say the myth is that sponsors interactive with patients. That’s a myth. And the truth is that we engage with clinical sites, and we try and make our design and all the elements—the enabling elements, simpler for the trial sites in order to manage the patients in a simpler way.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Thank you for that. So, Ken, I want your comment on that. Because okay, we are downstream patients. We have a doctor, healthcare team. And we know somewhere in the background there’s a sponsor that tried to enable good things to happen to get reliable data and hopefully a cure for us. So, how do we—what’s happening? Are we improving things there in that interaction between clinic and patient?
Ken Getz:
Yes, we absolutely are. And I’ll start by just echoing and acknowledging that Andy has really laid out just an incredible amount of input that goes into the design of a protocol. And that’s really for a really large company. We see many, many examples now of patient advocacy groups or smaller companies turning to a variety of approaches to solicit input from patients and healthcare providers. Some virtual approaches through a social media or digital community. So, there’s lots of ways that feedback is being channeled.
And that’s really important. The flip side, to really answer your question, is that our protocol designs are becoming more and more complex, more and more demanding. A much larger proportion of drugs are now targeting rare diseases that have been stricter inclusion and exclusion criteria. And the designs of the studies—the number of procedures and the number of visits. The number of investigators that are involved, all of that has also continued to grow. And as a result, we do see that our trials are taking longer.
We have yet to see a year when we actually witnessed a reduction in the cycle time to conduct a clinical trial. And we just have to figure out new ways of making the participation process less burdensome and more efficient.
Andrew Schorr:
Oh, my. So, T.J., you had been living with stage four melanoma, a life-threatening condition. We have people even on our team who are living with stage four disease. So, when Ken talks about things slowing, that’s not what we want to hear. We want to hear two things. One is, we can accelerate a development of new medicine. And ideally—because this is an issue certainly in the U.S., but I think worldwide, that by speeding the process, cutting through red tape, improving procedures and us participating, the cost can be less as well.
And when we talk about cancer, the costs are going through the roof as you know for people living with chronic cancer. And you know so well, Andy, people who are on some of the medicines that you’ve come out with at Merck. Where people used to die unfortunately in short order, are living a much longer life thanks to new medicines. We want it to happen faster and be financially achievable. Andy, any comment about the pace of science?
Andy Lee:
Yeah, I would like to make a couple of comments about that. We often hear the sort of story that 80 percent of clinical trials don’t recruit on time, et cetera. We do immense feasibility. Once we have designed a protocol, we send it out to all of the countries that could potentially work with us. We have staff in 47 countries. And they look at two areas of interest. One is the medical durability, is the comparator the one we use in our country. Is the protocol designed the way we practice clinical medicine, not clinical research medicine?
And will that enable us to recruit the patients? That’s the first level. The second level we look at is to ask the question, is this operationally feasible? Can we source the comparator? Do the clinical sites have the equipment? How would we have to ship the biological samples around the world? And based on medical durability and the operational durability, we do a site selection. And we run the indicators through a Monte Carlo simulation. And we simulate this trial. What if we took three countries out? What if we added this more sites? What if we changed this inclusion?
And we come up with a model of what the recruitment would look like. And recruit about 80 percent of our trials according to our model. So, about 80 percent of our trials recruit on our model time. And then if we look at the typical time for drug development, it has been from eight to 10 years for many years in the industry. And when we look at some of the development timelines now—the cycle times. Pembrolizumab (Keytruda), for example, from first study until first approval, was 60 percent reduction in time.
We were looking in the four-year time period. And we are looking at five or six years for many indications. And so, we’ve halved that cycle time for some of the newer oncology products. And there are a number of reasons we’ve done that. One is we have found operational efficiencies. Two is the trial design has enabled us to interim analysis with independent data monitoring committees to assist with that. I’d also like to put in a positive plug for the regulators.
I do believe—and I’ll talk specifically about the FDA, because they are the agency for the United States. They have revolutionized the way they approach the designs and the way they review the data. And they have breakthrough designation status they’ll give to compounds that are really looking like they have strong efficacy. And so, the approval process through the agency has improved remarkably. And they’re open to adaptive designs. And they are open to interim analysis. And they are open to all sorts of things.
So, I really wanted to give credit to our agency who has said, “Where there’s a need for breakthrough medications, we’ll try to find the path.” And so, I do believe there’s a real positive side to this. The challenge is the market is saturated. We have now more than 25 PD1s in development. And to put the 25th one in there, they are so far behind in development. I wonder what that does. It clogs up the system. So, when you look at how can we influence sites, at the top sites we only get one or two patients.
And we compete with 50, 60, 70, 80 other sponsors. And so, it becomes so saturated that, that site has to learn to do systems and process with 70 companies. And what they are doing is almost hedging. They are not focusing on certain things. So, in those cancer centers, they offer treatment for all lines of therapy and all types of cancer, the specialized and nonspecialized. And we are moving out of that sort of geography and moving it community-based oncology practices where it’s less saturated, and we can actually have more traction there and be able to engage more with the clinical trial enterprise for the good of the patients.
Andrew Schorr:
Ken, you write books about all kinds of issues around this. So, if we are getting—particularly in oncology to have trials offered at the community practice where those doctors work night and day—the nurses. They are really stretched. More and more cancers, genomic subtypes, most sophisticated testing. How—what would you say the patient can do. T.J. talked about it a little bit. What would you recommend to patients so that at that community oncology practice the patient and the family can kind of discover what may be available for them as Merck and other companies try to get these trials distributed?
Ken Getz:
Right, well you—talk about the whole enchilada, Andrew. You’re really touching on it. It’s also very exciting times for patients, not just cancer patients, but patients that are dealing with any chronic and severe illness today. And it’s really all about more of a partnership with the clinical care environment and clinical research. And of course, at the heart of it is the patients and their family being as informed as possible, sharing their electronic health and medical information so that they can be connected to trials that might be appropriate for them.
But it’s moving—as Andy said, away from the classic places where trials used to be conducted. And in many cases, they were at these dedicated centers that only conducted clinical trials. It’s a very competitive environment now for patients. So, many sponsor companies like Merck and others are looking at clinical care settings and moving into communities or, in some cases, large health systems where you can have clinical research professionals who will supplement and provide support to the healthcare providers, so they’re not stretched too thin.
But so that they have the clinical research capability onsite at the point of care. For patients it’s a great opportunity because now they have the opportunity to get their own healthcare or treating physician and treating nurse involved in a clinical trial as part of their overall care. And we expect to see more of that over time. We expect to see other virtual trials or opportunities for patients to participate in the comfort of their own home tied in with their clinical care setting.
And all of this is relatively new to the whole world of clinical trials and the investigation of experimental medications.
Andrew Schorr:
You touched on something I just want to follow up on. I’ve heard of this term site-less trials where you said you participate in your home. So, T.J. had to go from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa. I had to go from Seattle to Houston. There are not—this is a big deal, especially if you have little kids as I did, he has. So—and away from work and whatever your situation is. So, is technology going to come in play so Andy can get the data he needs for the FDA, but that we can have technology help accrue that data in a more efficient way.
Ken Getz:
And I’ll say absolutely. And my colleagues here today I’m sure can comment on this as well. But absolutely. We are seeing wearable technologies and mobile applications that now have the ability measure vital signs and other important baseline information in a validated manner. There are ways that you can access a specific facility for a highly specialized test, specialized imaging for example where the technician can evaluate it remotely. Blood can be drawn at remote locations as well.
So, there are lots of places where we have sort of this more flexible environment that can cater more to the patients and less about a specific physical facility where you have to go to participate in a trial.
Andrew Schorr:
T.J., I want to talk to you about diversity. So, you and I are kind of middle-class white guys. But we want to know how new medicines work for a variety of populations, ethnically, economic groups, et cetera. And Andy needs that data. And he goes to the FDA, and the FDA says, “Well, do you have Hispanic people? Do you have Asian people? Do you have African American people?” or whatever the country is because he works globally. And they say, “We want to understand are there differences?”
How are we doing with that. How can we make a difference there so that we really know what medicines make a difference for broader and also distinct populations?
T.J. Sharpe:
I’m sure Ken can back up some of these things with more hard data than I can. I know that different populations have different levels of trust with the medical system. One thing that you and I both experienced was a lack of options—a lack of good options. And when you get into dire straits, you tend to be a little more trustful of anything that comes along. But we have serious or chronic conditions that have proven treatments that might not be the most effective for certain populations.
And we’re not able to broad the scope to these minority populations or populations that don’t have access to NCI designated cancer centers or top-notch medical facilities. They are not able to get either in a trial that is looking for a drug that would help them or even get access to medicines that have been recently approved simply because their healthcare situation doesn’t allow it. Whether that’s a lack of insurance, a lack of healthcare literacy or simply a mistrust of—there’s a lot of generational mistrust I think in some communities of the clinical trial system.
So, as an advocate, I certainly push caretakers especially—and children caregivers for older populations who are maybe first or second-generation Americans to help facilitate a conversation between the medical professional who’s trusted and a patient that might not be able to get or rely on the information they’re given. Because it really will speak to populations that don’t get the opportunities that you and I have gotten simply because they are either not aware, or there is a barrier there to get to that medical professional.
Ken Getz:
I appreciate, T.J., you mentioned CISCRP. That’s one of the things that we’ve focused on for 18 years is bringing clinical research education into major metropolitan areas around the U.S. and parts of northern and western Europe where we plan for several months, and then we put on what we call an Aware for All events. And we really work very hard to encourage participation by—or from patients based within minority or underserved communities.
And I’m happy to say that we’ve had a lot of success with that. These are really difficult communities to reach through a lot of the traditional approaches. We have to rely on community centers and clergy and other approaches to really help these communities, for a lot of the reasons T.J. mentioned, trust the educational information, and come out to learn more. And I’m happy to say we’re seeing more and more people of diverse backgrounds that are curious and interested in learning more about clinical research, especially knowing that representative populations provide more information that can inform treatment for different types of patient sub-populations.
Andrew Schorr:
I want to go to Andy in a second. Andy, just one second. I wanted to mention and call out—and Andy’s company has been a leader in this. He was talking about PD1 and all of that. But drugs that have been breakthrough in immunotherapy for people like T.J. where—and it’s being explored in broader cancers where otherwise life was going to be short. And how to activate the immune system and really fight the cancer in people living long term. So, the people in those trials—and certainly there were people in the melanoma trials like yourself T.J.
Lung cancer trials and increasingly now others who did get tomorrow’s medicine today. Andy talked about accelerated approval which is great. So, that’s the impetus for the patient and the family. Is there the chance to get tomorrow’s medicine today? Now the obstacles may be distrust. You talked about that, Ken. And also, is maybe accessibility. Is it as a clinic near you? And Andy you talked about pushing that out. And then sometimes it’s related to cost.
Now is there anything that sponsors can do, Andy, related to the costs that people may have in being in certain trials? Where do we stand with that?
Andy Lee:
Yeah, so I’ll just touch on the distribution first and then get into the costs because they are linked. When we prosecute global trials—we’ve had a very U.S.-centric discussion so far. But cancers present differently in different geographic regions of the world. And so, when we want speed out of our trials. You want me to shorten that timeline and get drugs to market quickly. I do it internationally and in some cancers like esophageal cancer or some of the gastrointestinal cancers, Asia has a much higher prevalence of these cancers.
And we do a greater proportion of work there. We always include multi-country studies. And U.S. may have a greater proportion in other areas. So, we balance that out to optimize speed. Of course, with clinical trials the cost structure around the globe is very different. But let’s talk about U.S. We have spoken about a saturated core of clinical trial sites that we all go to. And I speak generally now for all sponsors. And we are all looking to optimize and get great efficiency.
At the same time, we realize we have many underrepresented geographies and ethnic groups—and not just ethnic groups, but under resourced populations. And so, what we’ve been thinking about is how can we support people, and support people at all levels. And so, we start off with thinking about the cost structure, and we obviously pay clinical sites for what they do. But we will support all sorts of things. We’ve been negotiating with Uber and Lyft, so we can build that into automated transport for patients.
Again, the IRB has to approve that. We are looking at ways to augment that they are not out-of-pocket for things. And we’ve been talking a lot with a group called Lazarex Foundation who has really expanded into under resourced communities and found ways to ensure that they have daycare and different access for those patients. We have worked extensively now to look at outreach programs into communities that typically wouldn’t be in trials. We are focusing in two areas right now as we speak.
One is next generation of HIV medicines, and the other one is in prostate cancer. And we’ve got a large program rolling out in prostate cancer. So, what we are doing is going into sites and we have put together training videos and training materials. And we are looking at cultural competency. So, it starts at the site. Are they culturally competent to engage a different community? And we’ve spoken about working with the community churches, community education systems.
And so that starts with cultural competency. I have a woman, Madelyn Goday, who works on this day and night in my organization. And she’s very strong at this. It’s early days, but if we can show that it works in one or two therapeutic areas and cancer types, we’d expand it further and further. But we can’t just have a shotgun approach and just go and do 100 sites and hope it works. Hope isn’t a good strategy. We are working systematically to engage different people. And as appropriate and approved by ethics committees, we will support all of these communities and help build infrastructure and capacity.
Those are important things for us. But as I said, where appropriate and where it’s sustainable. We can’t just throw money at something in the hopes something sticks. We have to have something sustainable and it goes to what Ken says, and that’s education and providing resources and materials. And we’ve used quite a lot of Ken’s materials in multiple clinical trials. Thank you for that, Ken. It’s been really helpful for us.
Andrew Schorr:
Great. I wanted to note for your audience. If you have a question, send it to questions@patientpower.info. We have expert panelists here. And this is really—we are all in this together. I think you hear the dedication from Andy at Merck and T.J. as a patient advocate and Ken as a professor and founder of organizations devoted to this. We want obviously accelerate medicines, but have the accurate data of how it affects different people, who is it right for so that the regulators—and thank you for what you said about the FDA here in the U.S., has the information to make a decision on should this medicine be available for people with that diagnosis.
Okay, so what about staying in the trial. So, T.J., how long—let’s take with the Keytruda trial or one of them. How long were you in to for?
T.J. Sharpe:
Nearly four years. Three-and-a-half years.
Andrew Schorr:
Were there ever times when you said, “I’m done. I want to bail out.” You know.
T.J. Sharpe:
I’ll be very careful how I answer this question for Andy’s sake.
Andy Lee:
It’s okay, T.J., we’re friends.
T.J. Sharpe:
No, probably the biggest crossroads I ever came to was when one of my tumors started growing about a year into it. And we weren’t sure if the medicine stopped working or not. We didn’t know what to do. And as it turned out, it was still working. And I think was just one spot that wasn’t responding. But everything else had responded great. However, at the point, as a patient, you’re thinking about yourself first and your family first and the trial second. It’s easy to stay compliant on a trial when things are going well.
But when you’re ahead of the medicine in some ways, and I think patients with chronic illnesses or in some cases rare diseases, are almost more knowledgeable than some of their doctors or the trial protocols about when they’re stopping. They don’t have the luxury of finishing out a protocol and seeing where their disease journey takes them. And the best example I can give of this is a very passionate advocate by the name of Jack Wheelen who we unfortunately lost a couple of years ago, but whose influence has kind of dominated the patient advocacy world for the last decade or so.
And Jack was able to monitor his health almost better than a doctor. And he knew when his trials weren’t working. When we get to that point in a clinical trial setting where we know the medicine is not being effective or where a patient would be better served to move on to another treatment. That’s when we are going to take the next step in clinical research, because now we’re aligning the trial design and the trial goals with a patient and a patient’s family’s treatment goals. And as those two points merge, that’s where clinical research becomes that much more effective as a care option.
Andrew Schorr:
That was well said. And I think with all those trials, you’re right, the team—that care team, what’s right for you at that time. Obviously to get the data, but also not at all costs. In other words, if the data is showing something is no longer effective for you, is there another treatment or a trial? I’ll just share my story for a second. So, I was in a phase two trial of combination therapies—which are increasingly common certainly in oncology. And after three months—halfway in the trial, my blood was kind of cleaned up.
And I had nausea and some other side effects. And I said to the trial coordinator, “You know, I think I’d like to stop.” And she said, “You know, our belief is that you still have microscopic illness in your bone marrow—in this case with the blood cancer, and the additional three months in this protocol will make a long-term difference for you. That’s what we believe.” They didn’t have the answer, but that’s what they believed. You know what? I stuck it out. She was right. I had 17-year remission.
If I’d stopped after three months, would I have? So, it’s a dialogue with the care team Andy, right? It’s this ongoing discussion not just entering the trial, but remaining in the trial, correct?
Andy Lee:
Yes. Absolutely. And I just wanted to impress a really important thing. People talk about people dropping out of trials. In cancer trials we see extremely low drop out. I mean these are potentially lifesaving medicines for all of the companies. But what we do want to make sure about is that when there is progression of disease, and it’s shown that the drug—whichever it is, the control arm or the active arm or the new agent, where there is progression of disease that they get the best available therapy.
And so that often contaminates trials because we have the crossover effect that now they are getting maybe the experimental agent in the standard of care type of thing. But most important thing for us is to track the survival of the patient, regardless of whether they go on another therapy. And we have put a tremendous amount of effort into looking at the informed consent and making sure we work with IRB to track patients long term survival.
Because as you’ve said, you may have a short-term issue that shows that the drug may not be working short term, but long term it may have prolonged and profound effects. Positive or negative, we don’t know that. And so, what we like to do is get long term survival. And we ask patients to consider when they sign the consent for whatever trial and whichever sponsor is sponsoring this, is to consider that knowing their status throughout their treatment—whether it’s on a sponsor’s drug or another sponsor’s drug or x therapy. It is really important — and I ask people to think about that.
Because that really helps us get as much data out of the individual treatment as possible. And that may prevent nonrequired trials in the future or it may say, “Wow, that really informed.” And we’d like to inform all cancer patients. If data we generate can inform other therapies, we certainly want to do that. We do not want to do wasteful clinical trials. So, tracking patients long term or patients—the message to patients is being cognizant of letting the sponsor—and the sponsor could be an institution. Letting them know your status is really important. All they want to know is are you dead or alive.
Andrew Schorr:
In the end, just one thing is, are we partners. In the end, our viewers here, are we your partner? And can we feel that not just for their doctor but you guys behind the scenes with the labs and everything, that in the end we are partners. And unless we see it that way, we won’t get anywhere.
Andy Lee:
Absolutely. I’m glad you used the term partners. Because when we’ve done a prep for this people have said, “Are they investors in the thing?” So, yes, patients invest their time and everything, but they are partners in research. They are contributing so much. They are contributing—they are going into the absolute unknown. And there is an immense trust level that is there. And we owe that back as research professionals is to treat people with respect, dignity and as partners, to make information available, to publish our data to get it out there as quickly as possible. And to make sure we get that back into the participant’s sort of hands.
Andrew Schorr:
So, Ken, how are we doing on that because you go back over the years and people say, “I don’t want to be in a trial because I’ll be a guinea pig,” and respect was not seen as part of it.
Ken Getz:
Well, that’s also a bit of a myth, right? You had a few that claimed that they felt the process made them feel like a guinea pig. The vast majority of people, over 90% of people who participate in a trial, would do it again. So, once they get past that unfamiliar area where they’ve perhaps only heard a few case examples or a few very vocal people who had bad experiences. Once they’ve done it themselves or they’ve been able to work with a group of advocates that really help them think about this process, and they become more educated, generally they’re very impressed with the level of professionalism, the compassion that exists at all levels.
I work with so many professionals—science professionals and pharmaceutical companies and at the research centers, and they all share that kind of commitment that Andy just mentioned. There’s a real desire to partner with the patient to really inform them. I would say one place where we need to see much, much more however is in the return of clinical trial results in a plain language to people who’ve been in trials. That’s a place where as an enterprise—government, research sponsors as well as industry have not really made this a standard practice at this point. And that’s one thing that we’re really working on actively.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. Great. So, T.J., you and I are investors—and Ken used that term and Andy used it, and I’ve always believed it. We are investors of our tissue, our body, our future to help other people and hopefully help ourselves. And certainly, for profit companies that may greatly benefit if they have a blockbuster therapy. But we need to be kept informed in the long term, right T.J.? We want to know what a difference our participation made.
T.J. Sharpe:
Certainly. And I think to echo what both Andy and Ken said is that patients do become partners. Patients who are involved in clinical research, a significant chunk become altruistically invested. I’ve heard more than once, “Even if this doesn’t help me, I’m glad I participated because it might help somebody else.” I know I’ve felt like that, and I’d venture that you’ve had some of that too, Andrew on your journey. So, it’s only—it’s at the very minimal fair, and it’s certainly very justified to expect as a co-participant in this.
And as kind of a co-creator of science with sites and sponsors that we understand what has come of our sacrifice and our time dedication to helping science out. We shouldn’t have to find it out through press releases from ASCO or hope that we hear about it on the nightly news. We deserve to hear what has happened. Not just because it can affect us as people and as patients, but that we put a lot into this too. And then we did our part to further medical research and we want to be part of the—whatever the end of the trial ends up being. We want to be aware of that. Not just for personal knowledge, but to know that it’s going to help this many other people.
Andrew Schorr:
Right, to be honored. So, Andy, at Merck you’ve established some internet platforms in particular related to keeping people informed, right?
Andy Lee:
Well, we’ve got an internet platform that people can log onto. I’m happy to share that with you; in which they can get access to a list of our trials. So, I didn’t prepare this but especially, but I did make a handmade note. And if anyone wants, it’s a very simple log on. Andrew Schorr:
You’re a great artist.
Andy Lee:
And it’s a simple one. What that will get you access to is two main important things. One is it gives access to information about clinical trials. We have a tab on there that tells everyone about the phases of clinical trials and what to expect in a trial. So, it’s an educational part. Then we have a lot of information about the Keytruda clinical trials were, are running, and they’re called keynote trials. And there you can look at the different indications. And you can look up and it has a telephone number you can call.
Now I must stress is that we run over 1,000 clinical trials in oncology. But many of them are not sponsored by us, they are investigator sponsored trials. So, you can go to clinics, and they run their own clinical trials that are not sponsor-related. And the NCI runs their clinical trials. So, there are a lot of different sources. And many companies will have clinical trials. We also have the website clinicaltrials.gov. I’ve had to use that in the last two days for a colleague.
And you can navigate that and look for different types of trials. And you can look at different products and everything. It’s not perfect. But at least it’s a place to go to. And I don’t want to sound as if I’m one sponsor centric. Many other companies have access to websites, and they really want to try and enhance and direct people to the clinical trials sites at which they are working.
Andrew Schorr:
Right, absolutely. And then you were working at the industry level with a group called TransCelerate, and I know T.J. is involved too, to try and establish common procedures as you establish trial sites, as you have communication, as you have training, right? So, that hopefully all boats will rise, right?
Andy Lee:
That’s correct. TransCelerate is a group that formed about eight or nine years ago. There were 10 initial member companies. I was a founder member of that. And we got together to say, “We have to improve operational efficiency.” So, we do not collaborate on molecular structures and those types—that’s competitive. We collaborate on what we call precompetitive, procompetitive aspects which says, “If we all work together to improve something, we’ll all get the benefit of this.” And we share it publicly.
There’s a website, you can look at it. But we’ve looked at standardizing protocols. We have a common protocol template. We’ve adopted that at our companies, so have other sponsors. The protocol can be developed in a standardized way. We’ve looked at standardizing ways where we can improve monitoring. We’re looking now at ways that we can work with investigative sites through i-platforms, shared investigative platforms. So, a clinical trial site has to provide the information for us as a sponsor and use the exact same standardized questionnaire and information for any other sponsor through a standard portal.
So, we are trying to reduce the burden on clinical trial sites. And we’ve plugged away for many years, and we are seeing greater traction there. We are seeing more efficiency, more standardization. We are seeing greater quality, less rework. And so, while it’s hard to quantify this, what we believe is that the sites are freed up of some of the more burdensome things, and they can direct their attention towards patients, patient safety, and access to clinical trials. So, the work may not be directly related to access for a cancer patient into a cancer trial, but there’s a lot of tangential spin-off of making a site more efficient so they can put their resources and energy in the right place.
Andrew Schorr:
Well, thank you for that effort and your leadership. So, Ken, you’ve been around this a long time. And you’ve deal with all the companies and the government and the various agencies. And as you know, in some quarters there’s a distrust for pharma. We mentioned cancer that you get the price tag of a drug, and it’s very expensive. And some people are struggling to pay for it. And there’s just frustration about it. And often in the news media they are the bad guys who are called out for unethical procedure or something that went awry.
So, how are we doing there in overcoming that because we talk to Andy, he seems very ethical, dedicated guy representing a company that’s been around I think well over 100 years. So, how are we doing to move clinical trials on in this area when people aren’t sure what to make of pharma.
Ken Getz:
Yeah. It’s a huge issue, Andrew. And I think part of the challenge is that all it takes is one questionable behavior, and it makes it difficult for the reputation of the entire industry. Right now, we are dealing with major pharma companies that are actually being fined for having contributed—a judgement, having contributed to the opioid crisis. And when you start looking at some companies aggressive marketing tactics, right? It really sort of sheds a darker light on a lot of the great work that companies do.
What we look at, at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development at the School of Medicine. We look at the overall output, the level of innovation that’s coming from the industry today. And we look at the number of complaints that have been filed with the FDA and other regulatory agencies around the world. And what we see is tremendous growth in the innovation and the quality of the innovation—drugs like Keytruda and other cancer immunotherapies. What an exciting area.
We see that the vast majority of companies really support and live by highly ethical, highly professional, highly compassionate approaches because they all know that it takes just one questionable issue that can really tarnish the reputation of every company operating in the industry. So—again, Andy also mentioned just how regulated we are as an industry, the fact that we have ethical review committees and data safety monitoring boards and so many other external agencies that help to oversee the work that’s done here.
So, I would say for patients who are thinking about clinical trials, it’s good to know the history. It’s good to know what you need to do to protect yourself. But the vast majority find that the people they deal with are ethical, they are professional, they are compassionate. And, as I mentioned, over 90% of people who get involved in trials say that they would do it again.
Andrew Schorr:
Thank you. That was a wonderful response. Andy, you mentioned earlier about starting research with the sickest people basically, where there are no options. But one of the questions that came in is, “Are trials only for the sickest people or are there of all those trials you talked about opportunities for people who maybe are newly diagnosed or could be their fairly initial therapy?
Andy Lee:
Yeah, great question. And thank you to the person who asked that. And the answer is that we start in people—because we don’t know if our experimental agent will work. And everyone assumes that new medicines are all going to succeed. And we work in research and researcher because of that many things fail very early on. They fail in phase one before anyone hears of it. It’s normally a code number at that point. And we may just not make the drug soluble enough, or it may not be distributed enough.
So, we may have a thing that works in a test tube or a petri dish. But to get that into humans and make sure that it’s safe at the dosage we use often fails. We just don’t progress far enough. So, what we want to make sure of is that firstly the drugs are safe. And there’s a trade-off between safety and efficacy. We’re constantly trading off. And so, what we do is we look at that and say when someone has no option and we want to get an option going, that’s where we start.
We’ve actually moved down the disease scale, and we’ve come into adjuvant treatment or secondary prevention. And we’ve gone into newer adjuvant is when you have a small tumor is we pre-treat to manage that tumor before surgery is done. And post-surgery we hope that there’s limited treatment or no treatment. And we actually have removed the cancer, and there would be no evidence of disease. But. of course, using the word cured is something we try not to do, because we prefer to use no evidence of disease.
But absolutely. And the next strategy is prevention of cancer. Our company does a lot of vaccinations in women’s health. We have a product that protects against human papilloma virus which is a precursor for cervical cancer. So, people who are vaccinated with this particular product—and I’m deliberately not using brand names for obvious reasons. But when you vaccinate for HPV, you essentially are preventing the likelihood of a cervical cancer. And there are now prospects in many disease areas where either vaccination or early treatment gives you a tremendous positive prognosis of not getting the disease later on in life.
The answer to your question is yes, we are absolutely looking at ways to prevent getting to a very advanced stage which is very costly to manage and very emotional and stressful and difficult.
Andrew Schorr:
I want to thank you. I just want to get a final comment on what you would say to patients or family member. And I want to start with you, Ken. What do you want patients right now to know so that—what tips would you give them so that they’d consider being part of clinical research or stay in clinical research and the benefit it could be for them.
Ken Getz:
I will say really two things. The first is there’s just a tremendous amount of information out there, and we recommend education before participation. So, do your homework and engage family and friends and people you meet and trust to help you make the decision. And the second point comes off of that. And that is this is not a decision you make alone. Really bring in your treating physician, your nurse. Bring in your support network. And chances are you will learn a lot, and you might even find a trial that is right for you.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. And Andy, what about you? A final point—what would you say to a friend or family member or colleague related to considering trials today.
Andy Lee:
We get this question every single day. And we get it from patients in need. And my answer is we are all patients. We are all going to face this as professionals in our job or professionals outside. And so, I say community of practice. And disease hits all of levels of society in all education professions, et cetera. And so, my thing is to encourage people to do what Ken has said. Work as a team. Get multiple inputs.
And I am sponsor agnostic. Get the best therapy that is available. And that may be the best care option—as I said, the ecosystem in which you get the care is really important as well as the medicines that you get. So, have the discussion. Trust the medical professionals, they are very skilled out there. They are extremely well educated. And I just urge people, “Don’t think on two clicks on Google you are going to solve what your treatment option is.” Really discuss it with people because not all the options are public, and there is not enough information available about how to manage the whole disease through the entire enterprise. Trust the professionals.
Andrew Schorr:
Well said. And T.J., you and I are alive today because of trials. What do you want—what’s the thing you want to leave our viewers with?
T.J. Sharpe:
That they don’t have to be involved in clinical research. I think that’s an important distinction to make. And it’s going to pull together what Andy and Ken said that clinical research should not be considered a hail mary or last gasp option. If you are a patient—and we are all going to be patients as Andy mentioned. You want the best care for you. You want to be able to weigh all of your options. And if you are not considering clinical research, if you don’t know about it or aren’t able to get the information you need about it, then you are not going to be able to make the best healthcare decision long term for your health.
So, take that information that you can get. Find the trusted sources. Be able to reach out to advocates or colleagues or someone that you know that would have the disease or can connect you with good information. And be your own advocate—a little cliché, but really own that healthcare information. And once you are able to collect all of the different treatment options, then you consult with your professional medical team as to what the plan forward—the best plan forward for your individual situation would be.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. T.J., my friend, thank you. It’s a delight to see you again. Andy, with Merck, thank you so much for being with us and bringing your years of expertise. And, Ken, being at an independent non-profit center and also at Tufts University there, thank you for all the work you do. I want to thank the Patient Empowerment Network for pulling this all together. And the sponsors who supported us in this effort, AbbVie Inc., Celgene Corporation. Daiichi Sankyo and Novartis.
All these companies and I’m sure many more, working so that research can move forward. We can be true partners in it. And hopefully get tomorrow’s medicine today to make a difference for the community and live a long life, and hopefully a cure, right? I’m Andrew Schorr in California. Remember, knowledge can be the best medicine of all.
Please remember the opinions expressed on Patient Empowerment Network (PEN) are not necessarily the views of our sponsors, contributors, partners or PEN. Our discussions are not a substitute for seeking medical advice or care from your own doctor. That’s how you’ll get care that’s most appropriate for you.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/CT-Myths-1.png600600Kara Rayburnhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngKara Rayburn2019-09-17 10:30:152020-01-08 12:32:58Is It Difficult to Participate in a Clinical Trial?
Cancer patients are living longer as a result of clinical trials that test new treatments, therapies, procedures, or new ways of using known treatments.
Watch along as a panel of experts from the Diverse Cancer Communities Working Group (CWG) Sustainable Healthy Communities, LLC, Baptist Memorial Hospital–Memphis, and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) explore the questions:
What do patients and their support networks need to know about clinical trials as an option for cancer treatment if they are insured through Medicare or Medicaid?
What requirements differ from region to region and what is covered or not covered?
Transcript:
Laura Levaas:
Hello, and welcome to this Patient Empowerment Network Clinical Trial MythBusters program on a very, very important topic, what impact does Medicaid or Medicare have on a patient’s ability to participate in a clinical trial. My name is Laura Levaas, and I’m the lung cancer community manager for Patient Power. I’m also a Stage 4 lung cancer survivor. I’m two years out from diagnosis, and I’m also on Medicaid. So, this is a topic that’s really important to me on a personal level.
This program is produced by Patient Power. We want to thank the following companies who provided financial support to make this possible. While they don’t have editorial control, we appreciate the support of AbbVie Inc., Celgene Corporation, Daiichi Sankyo, and Novartis for their support.
Today we are joined by some really amazing guests, the first being Mark Fleury from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network out of Washington DC, followed by Jeanne Regnante, also out of Washington DC, and Jeanne is with the Diverse Cancer Communities Working Group, Sustainable Healthy Communities, and last but not least, nurse navigator Laura McHugh from the Baptist Cancer Center in Memphis, Tennessee. Welcome to all of our guests today. Thank you for joining us.
So, Mark Fleury, Mark is interesting because he has an understanding, a very deep understanding, about this issue from a regulatory and research perspective. He’s going to share with us what he’s learned about barriers in clinical trial participation and solutions to overcome some of those options.
Jeanne is going to share her viewpoint as part of the Diverse Cancer Communities Working Group. She helps share information about access to care treatment and inclusion in clinical trials for underserved populations.
And Laura McHugh who is joining us by phone (she is a friend of a friend of mine, and she’s really amazing) is a nurse navigator who has worked in the cancer space for 24 years. And she helps guide people in underserved communities every day as part of her working life. She works with Medicare and Medicaid patients on the daily. So, we’re looking forward to hearing from her.
So, back to our program, patients are living longer as a result of clinical trials that test new treatments, therapies, and procedures, or new ways of using known treatments for new ways. The myth here behind Clinical Trial MythBusters today is that being in a clinical trial isn’t covered by medical insurance particularly for Medicaid or Medicare patients. I know for me personally I’m interested in being in a clinical trial and I’m on Medicaid but I don’t even know what that means. So, I definitely need some guidance.
So, as we’re talking about this today, if you have any questions about if you’re a patient yourself or you’re a support person for a patient that has cancer or any kind of disease wanting to know about clinical trials on Medicare or Medicaid, we’re here to help you. Send your questions to questions@patientpower.info. So, viewers who are joining us today thank you again. If you’re on Medicare or Medicaid, what do you even do if you’re presented with the option to participate in a clinical trial to treat your condition? Let’s talk with Mark Fleury. Hi Mark.
Mark Fleury:
Hello Laura. Thanks for having me on.
Laura Levaas:
Yeah. We’re so, so grateful to have you on our program today because you have such a deep knowledge in this industry and on this topic. Can you tell us real briefly what exactly you do for the Cancer Action Network? And then I’d like to talk to you about barriers around Medicare and Medicaid.
Mark Fleury:
Sure. So, I work for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. We’re the policy and advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society, and we focus on public policy, so that’s regulation, laws that impact cancer patients. And specifically, my work deals with policies around research and drug and device development, so how can we get those findings that happen in the laboratory into the clinic. And specifically, that goes through clinical trials. So, I’ve spent the last couple of years with a large partnership of other stakeholders taking a really deep dive into looking at clinical trials and all of the challenges patients have in getting themselves enrolled as a part of those trials.
Laura Levaas:
Good. We look forward to hearing more. Can you tell us a little bit about the current state of clinical trial participation in the US right now?
Mark Fleury:
Sure. So, there’s not real solid numbers, but we believe somewhere between 6 to 7 percent of US cancer patients participate in a clinical trial right now. So, that’s a fairly low lumber overall, and it’s also a fairly low proportion of the patients who would be interested. Research has found that between 50 and 70 percent of patients would say yes to participating in a clinical trial if they were asked. But unfortunately, many are not asked. And some of those who are asked are unable to enroll for a variety of external reasons. One of the things that we do know is that the people who do enroll in clinical trials tend to be less diverse and better off financially than the overall population with cancer.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. What are some of the barriers around Medicare and Medicaid patients who want to get involved in a clinical trial?
Mark Fleury:
Sure. So, obviously, first of all, there has to be a clinical trial for the patient based on your clinical characteristics. But assuming that that is the case, for a patient to enroll in a clinical trial, it’s critical that their insurance cover the routine care costs of that clinical trial. In other words, there are costs in a clinical trial that a patient would see regardless if they were in a clinical trial not. Say, for example, the first step of any treatment is a surgery and then the second step in normal care would be one drug but in a clinical trial it’s a different drug.
Well, regardless, you’re always gonna get the surgery. It’s important that insurance cover that routine part of the clinical trial. And unfortunately, historically, that’s not always been the case. Fortunately, in Medicare, they have covered that since 2000. That is not the case universally for Medicaid. And we can talk a little bit more about that later if you’d like.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. Perfect. I would definitely like to follow up on that topic seeing as I’m a Medicaid person myself. Can you touch briefly on what actually is different between the two programs in terms of clinical trial, the actual coverage? You mentioned routine care; is that for both programs?
Mark Fleury:
Well, so what’s important to note is that Medicare is a federally administered program. And so, there is one universal federal policy, and if you’re in Medicare, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Florida or if you’re in Idaho, the policies are identical. Medicaid is an insurance program that while partially funded by federal dollars, it’s administered by each state. And as such, each state has quite different policies. So, if you’ve see one Medicare policy, it’s uniform. If you’ve seen one Medicaid policy, it’s only relevant in the state in which you happen to be. So, it could vary significantly from state to state.
Laura Levaas:
Right. And so, depending on your state, you would need to follow up with your local maybe human services office to get specific questions answered.
Mark Fleury:
That’s correct. Yeah. There are some resources (and I think we can provide those at the end of the webinar) where generally speaking some states have passed laws or signed agreements in which their Medicaid programs have to cover those routine care costs in Medicaid. And we can certainly make available those states. But even within those states, it’s important to look closely at the policies. For example, in Medicare, Medicare also covers any adverse events. So say, for example, while you’re being treated, you had to be admitted to an ICU for heaven forbid a heart attack or something like that. Medicare pays for all of those unexpected expenses. And that coverage may vary state by state in Medicaid.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. Thank you, Mark. We’re looking forward to those resources. And for those of you watching, we will definitely be providing a downloadable guide with all sorts of resources to help you. Thanks Mark.
Mark Fleury:
You’re welcome.
Laura Levaas:
Hi Jeanne.
Jeanne Regnante:
Hey Laura.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. I can’t wait to talk to you about this. I have so many questions. I feel like we could talk for an hour. So, aside from the myth, I came into this thinking, “I’m on Medicaid; I probably can’t get into a clinical trial when and if I get to that point.” And then also, “If I am, it’s probably cost prohibitive because I’m on a fixed income.” So, is participating in a clinical trial expensive or cost prohibitive if you’re on Medicare or Medicaid like I thought? I mean, I know Mark touched on some of the issues, but what would you say? How would you answer that?
Jeanne Regnante:
For low-income patients, the cost of routine care and logistic support needed during a clinical trial is certainly a barrier to participation. And Mark pointed out some of these costs. But specifically in patients in rural communities, remote communities, aging population, children, patients with cognitive disabilities or physical disabilities. These are the same patients who have low access to care in general.
And covering the cost for routine care in a clinical trial and also the logistic support is a clear barrier to participation. So, there are clear barriers there, travel, housing, parking, paying for food, on having access to clinical trials not only for routine care costs like Mark alluded to but also logistical support being included in the clinical trials. So, all of those things are barriers.
Laura Levaas:
And would you say that seniors are also part of this underserved population?
Jeanne Regnante:
Absolutely, especially seniors that live alone, that are in remote rural areas in the United States. And remember, that’s 20 percent of the population, aging population, in those areas. So, clearly, we need to do better to engage those patients in care and also clinical trials.
Laura Levaas:
So, is it possible for us to draw any conclusions about how many people are on Medicare or Medicaid right now in the US? I did a little bit of internet sleuthing mainly through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and it seems like there – the numbers that I came up with were pretty high, and it’s almost like 40 percent of the population is on Medicare or Medicaid. And so, has it –
Jeanne Regnante:
That’s absolutely true. Look at by the numbers, there is 329 million people living in the United States, and that’s according to the last census, which is a hot topic these days. There is 60 million people on Medicare, beneficiaries, and about 66 million people Medicaid. So, together, that represents about 40 percent of the population. And we have to remember kids. So, there are 7 million patients on CHIP, which is part of the Medicaid program. So, if you include percentage of people on Medicaid plus kids on CHIP, that’s 22 percent of the population.
Laura Levaas:
So, then circling it back around to clinical trial participation, how can we connect the dots here?
Jeanne Regnante:
So, I think one of the main issues is clinical trial sponsors and the clinical trial operations folks in the sites working together to do a better job of reaching out to patients, ensuring that everybody is asked to participate, and not just selecting the ones who people think can participate but asking everybody to participate and understanding the eligibility of all patients and working together to help to cover their costs to keep them in chart.
Laura Levaas:
Got it. Mark, I’m gonna pull you back into the conversation here for a minute. Can you touch briefly on what’s happening in the news right now around Medicare and Medicaid that could potentially impact clinical trials? Or maybe, Jeanne, you can speak better to that.
Jeanne Regnante:
I’ll let Mark take that one.
Mark Fleury:
Certainly, so, Medicaid traditionally has been a program that has served primarily children in many states, children and pregnant women. Starting close to 10 years ago with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, states had the ability to expand Medicaid eligibility beyond those kids and pregnant women. And now we see many states who have expanded the roles of Medicaid recipients to healthy adults who just happen to be lower income.
And so, what that really has changed is the number of people obtaining their insurance through Medicaid. Obviously, there has been a lot of – it’s a state-by-state decision whether or not Medicaid is expanded. The Affordable Care Act as a whole is hanging in the balance in a court case, and there’s obviously been a lot of discussion about whether it should continue or not. So, certainly, the number of people who are supported through Medicaid is a dynamic number, and that certainly is subject to changing policies that are still under active discussion.
I will say that Medicare, again, the coverage for routine care costs in clinical trials for Medicare, long-standing policy since 2000 that has been relatively stable. And I would expect that to continue unchanged.
Laura Levaas:
Thank you, Mark. And Jeanne, I’m gonna come back to you in a minute. For viewers that are watching, thank you for hanging in there with us. If you have any questions that you would like us to address in the program, we’ll get to that at the very end after we’ve talked with all of our esteemed panelists. Send your questions to questions@patientpower.info. So, now I would like to talk with Laura McHugh. Are you with us, Laura?
Laura McHugh:
I am. Thank you so much for having me.
Laura Levaas:
Hi. I am so excited to have you. I met Laura McHugh because she is a nurse navigator for a friend of mine who is ALK positive, which is the type of lung cancer that I have. And she works very closely with my friend and speaks so highly of Laura. So, I’m excited to have her on the program today. I wonder, Laura, if you could tell us why you think that clinical trials are important.
I wanted to share why they’re important to me personally. The medication that I’m on right now of course went through a clinical trial process, and it wasn’t even around before the year 2011. I was Stage 4 when I got discovered, which happens often with non-small cell lung cancer because many folks are asymptomatic. So, for me, what that means is if I didn’t have people going through the clinical trial process ahead of me, I probably wouldn’t be here today. So, on that level, is there anything that you can say why you think that clinical trials are important especially for people on Medicare or Medicaid?
Laura McHugh:
Absolutely. I believe that the clinical trials pave the way. All of the genetic testing that’s done now, all of the testing that’s been done all the way down to a molecular level. So, with these clinical trials and all of the things that have been tested, it’s opened up doors beyond what we ever thought we would have for lung cancer. There are so many opportunities and lines of therapy that you never had before.
And across the board, I think clinical trials and participation in clinical trials, all of the people that have done that, just opened the doors for all of the people in the future. We had a lady who was in her 90s, and she met all of the requirements, participated in a clinical trial. And all the way through, she said, “I want to stay on this. I want to do this. It may not help me, but it will help everybody after me.” And that’s just profound.
Laura Levaas:
Right. And so, Laura, tell the audience who you work with. I know that you specialize in thoracic cancers, and I know that clinical trials don’t always just focus on cancer. They deal with multitudes of diseases and conditions. But can you let us know who you work for because he’s famous in a way, right?
Laura McHugh:
Absolutely. I’m actually the physician nurse for Dr. Raymond Osarogiagbon. He is well known in the field of lung cancer. That’s our specialty. We have a multidisciplinary meeting every week and a conference. He sits on the board for NCCN and multiple, multiple other things as far as paving the way for lung cancer. I’ve been actually privileged to be his nurse since he came in 2005. We’ve built our practice together, and, oh, the changes are just – the changes that I’ve seen in the years that we’ve done this are amazing. And he is brilliant; he is. He’s known all over the world. And our focus is lung cancer.
Laura Levaas:
That’s great. Can you shed some light on the role of the patient navigator or the nurse navigator in what you do on a daily basis with your patients especially around clinical trials and folks who are on those government-supported insurances like me?
Laura McHugh:
Sure. So, we base all of our care – we – or I’m blessed to have a research department and two really dedicated research coordinators that I work with very closely. They’re not nurses like myself, but they do all of the coordinating for the care on the studies and all of the above from patients that are uninsured that are on Medicaid, Medicare, even private insurance. And what we do, we see primarily all of our new patients insurance allowing through our thoracic program.
So, I actually have a coordinator with me when I’m in clinic. And so, if we even think a patient is potentially eligible – not even just for a drug study. There are smoking cessation studies that we have, different protocols for that. So, it really starts at the beginning. There’s the surgical studies, different things like that. And every Wednesday is that clinic. And even during the week, if there’s anything going on, they come to our regular clinics as well and do follow up with the patient.
Laura Levaas:
So, I hear chatters here and there – when I bring up the subject of clinical trials, I hear things like, “Oh, trials are only for young people,” or, “Trials are only for old people,” or, “Trials are only for this type of person.” Can you speak to that a little bit?
Laura McHugh:
Wow. Yeah. Well, part of it is if you look at where we sit, there’s always – until now, in recent years, you heard about research but you didn’t really hear about research. So your older population, they were skeptical. It’s a different generation of, “Are you experimenting on me?” And part of your underserved communities, a lot of people didn’t know anything about it. They’re limited on getting to a physician in general much less being able to participate or being in a center that even focuses on clinical trials.
So, I think all of that in the past was very, very real. I believe now people are coming around and seeing, “Wow, anybody can do this.” I think people are still limited. Some people don’t have computer access. It’s hard in a day of electronics, we sit down and we can pull up all of this information, but not everyone can do that.
Laura Levaas:
Right. We do make a lot of assumptions when it comes to those type of factors. So, being that you’re a nurse navigator, I imagine that when you’re seeing a patient, you’re thinking, “Okay, is there a trial that this person might be good for?” I don’t want to say convince, but how do you help people learn about clinical trials and the importance of it because when you and I spoke yesterday, you said you want to make it clear to patients it’s always voluntary, “We’re not dragging anybody into a study. We want to make sure that you want to be there”?
Laura McHugh:
Absolutely. So, again, all of our patients are approved during a thoracic conference, and then all of the ones that we can bring to our clinic within our healthcare system we bring through that clinic, and if not, we bring them to our general oncology clinic. The physician will sit down with the patient. Of course, we’ve met with the coordinators, they’ve looked at everything. And they’ll come to us and say, yeah, they like this or this. The physician sits down and talks with them, and then I go in the room and talk with them as well. We tell them, “This is totally voluntary, something that’s open to you if you’re interested,” talk about it.
The coordinators go in and speak with them as well. We tell them to go home, “If you have any questions or concerns, call back.” And a lot of times they will. You have to be able to digest something. It’s a very overwhelming visit to walk in an oncologist office and be told all of this information and try to sort it all out on the spot. So, a lot of times they’ll go home, they’ll think about it, they’ll call back. Basically, communication, I just feel that’s the most important – it’s communication.
Laura Levaas:
Absolutely. So, to circle back a little bit, do you feel like it’s realistic for patients that are on Medicare and Medicaid to be in a clinical trial?
Laura McHugh:
Absolutely. I think it’s clinically appropriate for anyone that fits. If everything lines up the way it should and they’re able to participate, I think it would be wonderful if everyone would.
Laura Levaas:
This may seem like a silly question, but do folks on those programs get the same care as somebody that has a private insurance?
Laura McHugh:
Absolutely, absolutely from our standpoint. Of course, I’m answering from my institution and what I know that we do. And they do, absolutely. And sometimes there are challenges. I mean, we’ve had patients that were uninsured, underinsured. Again, Medicaid, you have to make sure – Medicare’s a little bit different again because all of the guidelines were set state to state. Medicaid’s different because each state has its own – and if you see someone in Mississippi, sometimes they can’t come across to Tennessee to go to the hospital or to do this. So, it’s a patient-by-patient basis, but overall, I think our patients are being treated, being offered clinical trials, and should participate if at all possible.
Laura Levaas:
Wonderful. And again, just to underline that clear and open communication is important.
Laura McHugh:
I think communication is No. 1 for everything. People are scared. They have questions. They don’t even know what to ask immediately. So, I think all of the support you can give – everybody has a knowledge base and everybody is empowered with that knowledge. Sometimes it’s all about just listening, communicating, and then answering any question they have no matter how simple it may be to us. To a patient, it’s a very profound thing. And it could be as simple as, “How am I going to get back and forth? Do you have a way to help me?”
Laura Levaas:
Thank you, Laura.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. I’m gonna circle back to the group and just ask some questions. I wanted to rewind with Mark and talk about Medicare Advantage. I am on Medicaid for about another year and I’m going to be rolled into Medicare, which under typical – I mean, I’m 44 years old, and so Medicare is typically for people that are 65 and older. And so, for me, it feels a little bit strange, and I’m like, “I just want to know how are they different.” And so, I have called my local CMS office, my local Social Security disability office. And I feel like I get different information. So, it’s sifting through everything. I just wanted to call out Medicare Advantage because you mentioned that. Can you expand on that and how it ties in with clinical trials?
Mark Fleury:
Sure, sure, happy to. So, traditional Medicare has multiple parts. You have Medicare Part A, which is the hospitalization, and Medicare Part B, which is the physician portion, and then a Medicare Part D, which is the drug portion. A few years back (understand the complexities of all the pieces and parts of Medicare) there was a decision to allow private insurance companies to administer all the programs together on an optional basis.
So, if you qualify for Medicare, you can use the traditional what’s called fee-for-service Medicare or you can go through a private insurance company. So, this might be an Anthem or a Blue Cross or another private insurance company like that who has been authorized to bundle all of your Medicare benefits together under one program. Now because it is a privately run version of Medicare, they’re required to offer the minimum benefits, but they do have some flexibilities in how they administer that.
So, a traditional fee-for-service Medicare, as long as a physician advertises that they accept Medicare patients, you can go anywhere you want to. If you live in Florida and you go on vacation into Los Angeles and become ill and you want to go visit a physician there, as long as they accept Medicare patients, that’s fine. Medicare Advantage on the other hand looks a lot more like private insurance in that they sometimes build closed networks, so, you can only go to certain systems or only go to certain doctors. So, that’s an important difference between the two.
And in terms of with clinical trials, how that’s affected, if you want to enroll in a clinical trial and you’re Medicaid Advantage, right now the current policy is for the portion of your care that is related to the clinical trial, you would revert back Medicare fee-for-service, traditional Medicare. That doesn’t mean that you are kicked off of Medicare Advantage, but anything related to that clinical trial would be handled from a payment and a billing standpoint through traditional Medicare.
So, if you’re on a cancer clinical trial, all those cancer clinical trial bills would go through traditional Medicare. But say, for example, you needed to get your flu shot or had a cold or something like that, that would still be handled under your traditional – or under your Medicare Advantage. You wouldn’t be kicked off of it. It’s just the treatment part of your clinical trial would go through traditional Medicare. So, a little confusing, but that’s where we are from a policy standpoint today.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. Jeanne, I wanted to ask you – and again, if you want to defer this to one of our other panelists, that’s A-okay. I’m thinking of folks who have some barriers around those additional costs in a clinical trial. Is it typical or acceptable for the, for example, pharmaceutical company or the sponsor of the clinical trial to pick up some of the costs that may not be covered under Medicare or Medicaid?
Jeanne Regnante:
The answer to that question is yes, it is appropriate for them to do so. And actually, there is an FDA guidance document (it’s Guidance for Industry) that actually reinforces their ability to do so because there has been some concern that covering costs like logistical costs or hotels or travel or giving people a gas card would create undue influence. So, I think the FDA put out a draft guidance that’s clearing that up and basically reinforcing the fact that pharmaceutical companies are able to do that.
I can tell you from our working group, we have 10 active major pharmaceutical company members in the Diverse Cancer Communities Working Group. And I asked them what they usually do in this space, and during the planning phase of the clinical trial, they go out to their sites to ask for a budget and ask them what they need in terms of routine care costs and also logistical costs. And the site sends that information in. And generally, the pharmaceutical companies cover those costs.
What I’ve found to be the case, which is interesting to me, is that the clinical trial operations team in the sites have a lot to do, they have a lot of work to do. And this was brought up to me by a couple of leaders in pharmaceutical companies, that what they’ve learned is that they also need to ask what capabilities do you need, do you need people support or FTE support to be able to adjudicate and track those costs at a site level and validate them and close them out and pay them. And a lot of times, the answer is yes and pharmaceutical companies are paying for those FTEs at the site. So, those costs are being covered when the site asks for support.
Laura Levaas:
Got it. So, since we’re talking about this topic anyway, that draft to FDA guidance publication, I’m gonna say it. It’s a really long title. It’s a mouthful. But I’m hoping you can break down a little bit of that. So, it’s called Enhancing the Diversity of Clinical Trial Populations, Eligibility Criteria, Enrollment Practices, and Trial Designs Guidance for Industry. What is the meaning –?
Jeanne Regnante:
So, I do want to paraphrase what the FDA says, but I’m gonna read the portions that I think are appropriate for this discussion. So, there’s a section in this guidance that was put out in June, and it’s a draft guidance, so, it’s open for public comment. And it focuses on study design and conduct considerations for improving enrollment in the industry. There’s a big section. I really would urge everybody on the call to read this section because I think it’s really great and progressive and quite empathetic of a major governmental agency to put out this guidance to industry.
It gives examples. It notes the burden for trial participants in remote and rural locations, for example, and also acknowledges the trial burden on the elderly, children, disabled, and cognitively impaired individuals who require caregiver assistance. So, what the FDA does in this guidance is they encourage industry to reduce No. 1 the number of study visits where possible and use electronic communications or mobile technology to monitor the patient for safety and efficacy because of the challenges of a number of folks in this patient population.
They also encourage industry to make sure that patients are aware of financial reimbursements, and that’s what Laura does. She manages their expectations in the recruiting stage and reinforces the fact – and the guidance also reinforces the fact that the FDA does not consider reimbursement of travel, lodging, parking, time, and other considerations to raise issues concerning undue influence. And they also reinforce that the amount of dollars that might be reimbursed should always be addressed with the local IRB. So, I think this is a very progressive guidance to give the industry so there are no questions on what they can and cannot do.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. Thank you very much. Laura McHugh, quick question, and Mark touched on this earlier in the program, what if something goes wrong in a clinical trial and a patient has to be hospitalized or treated for an unexpected reason? That’s covered, right?
Laura McHugh:
It has been for our patients. If it’s Medicare, what you always look at is standard of care. And the Medicaid patients that we’ve had, when they’ve been hospitalized, to my recollection, we’ve not had anyone that we’ve had difficulty substantiating why it should be covered. I mean, sometimes you have to go the extra step and go back and forth with the insurance companies or Medicaid. But we so far have been able to get it covered.
Laura Levaas:
I have a couple of questions that have come in from the audience, and feel free, Mark, Jeanne, or Laura. I’m assuming that a nurse navigator or a doctor is going to have the best information on where to find out about a clinical trial. But where are the best resources for someone to go? And again, I’m cancer focused because I have lung cancer and I work for Patient Power. And we support all types of folks with cancer. But there are folks that are in clinical trials that are not cancer related. Mark, what would be a source where somebody can find a clinical trial?
Mark Fleury:
Sure. So, in looking at the current cancer clinical trial landscape, we know that the overwhelming majority, probably 75 to 80 percent of patients, who end up on a clinical trial found that clinical trial because someone on their care team recommended it or someone from the clinical trial team approached them. So, it’s most common that someone from the medical system invites that patient. But we also know that a lot of patients get their cancer care at very small practices (they might be single-doc practices or things like that) where clinical research is not a normal part of what they do. And in that case, you would not necessarily hear about clinical trials from your nurse or from your physician.
In those cases, it’s up to an empowered patient to find the clinical trial on their own. And that’s obviously a little bit harder but certainly not impossible. And there are public-facing websites. Some of them are sponsored by the government, things like ClinicalTrials.gov where all clinical trials whether cancer or not are listed in the United States. And NCI has one, trials.cancer.gov, which is just NCI sponsored, which is the National Cancer Institute. So, it’s federally funded clinical trials.
But additionally, many patient organizations both have general educational materials about clinical trials – so, for example, the American Cancer Society at the website cancer.org has information about clinical trials. At the moment, we don’t have a matching window, if you will, but many patient-advocacy organizations also actively help patients one on one with matching. So, many of these are disease specific. So, there are lung cancer groups who you can call at the hotline, colorectal cancer, etc. Many patient-advocacy organizations will do the direct handholding and navigation if your own provider does not do that for you.
Jeanne Regnante:
I just want to add to that great list that Mark gave in terms of finding clinical trial sites. So, just a shout out to Stand Up To Cancer, they have a clinical trial matching site for any type of cancer. You can contact them, and they will actually match you to a clinical trial site in your area so you can give that information to your provider so they can call them to see if you qualify. Sometimes it’s difficult for anybody, myself included, to understand what clinical trial I might be eligible for just by looking at a site. So, it’s nice to have somebody do that for you.
Also, all the major pharmaceutical companies have if you happen to know about a given therapy or that you might be looking to be on because you heard about it it’s good to ask for help from somebody to find out what company makes it go to their website. And they all have clinical trial information on their sites as well.
Laura Levaas:
Thank you. And I’d like to share a little bit about my personal experience. When I was diagnosed, I was told about a Facebook group for my specific type of lung cancer mutation. And I learned about clinical trials from that group. And if I had never, like you said, Mark, been an empowered patient and been very curious in wanting the best care for myself, I probably would not have found out about those trials because some of them are just fly under the radar; they’re doing their work.
I think these are some great resources, and thank you for sharing those. One more question that I would like to ask the group before we – we have a couple of questions that came in from the audience, which is awesome. What is one solution (Mark, we’ll start with you) that you would like to put forth to address the issue of better clinical trial participation for Medicare and Medicaid patients which really, I mean, goes out to the larger group, I mean, really for anyone?
Mark Fleury:
Yeah. Well, I think specifically within the population of Medicare and Medicaid, as I mentioned at the outset, Medicare has a uniform national policy. So, someone like Laura, if she became a clinical trial professional in a different state, the Medicare policy would be the same it doesn’t matter what state you’re in. Whereas Medicaid, it varies so much, and that can be quite a bit of hurdle.
As I mentioned, I work in the policy and advocacy portion of ACS, and so, we focus on legislation. And so, one of the public policies that we have been advocating for (and there’s actually a piece of legislation before Congress right now), it would harmonize all 50 states plus DC Medicaid policies such that standard of routine care costs in cancer clinical trials would be covered in all 50 states in the same way and there wouldn’t be this ambiguity or uncertainty from state to state in terms of how it’s covered. So, that would be my one wish within this question if I could wave my magic wand.
Laura Levaas:
Yeah. That would very much clarify everything. Ms. McHugh, do you have a solution? What would you like to see happen to get more folks participating in clinical trials specifically those on the Medicares and Medicaids?
Laura McHugh:
Again, from my nursing background, a lot of it’s communication. And I think it’s sitting down with patients and explaining what some of the benefits are, what the risks are but what the benefits are because truly the benefits outweigh the risks. People worry about money and they worry about all of these things. Well, if it’s Medicare, it’s standard of care. Anything above and beyond, if there’s a problem, then you appeal back to the drug company, the provider.
Opening doors, communicating with patients, telling them, “You have a more active role in your own healthcare when you’re on a clinical trial. You’re empowered. You’re educated. You’re the first to benefit from this drug. You have your health professionals close. You’ve got a research coordinator, your nurse, your doctor, access to new drugs that may not be available.” I just feel like communication and – we’re totally sitting down with someone and explaining and taking some of the fear away from what people think about being on a clinical trial.
Laura Levaas:
I have a friend in the lung cancer community that was in a clinical trial. I don’t remember the specific drug, but she is still on it after it came out of trials. And she’s been on it for years, which is amazingly successful. And if not for that trial, she wouldn’t be where she is. And so, that’s just amazing. Okay. And then, Jeanne?
Jeanne Regnante:
You know what, first of all, I agree with what Mark said and what Laura said. First of all, it needs to be legislated. And No. 2, there needs to be better communication amongst trusted providers, trusted community leaders, primary care physicians to talk to patients to have them understand that a lot of these trials now include placebo versus standard of care and also help them to manage their expectations in terms of what will be covered in terms of their cost. And the folks that need to do that are the closest to the healthcare systems and patient navigators and care coordinators who can talk to an individual specific situation.
I think in addition to all those things, I think that generally industry needs to do a better job of placing trials where the patients are. Although that seems quite trite, patients that are in underserved communities or in rural communities, they don’t often have access to these cancer centers which are big academic centers that do a lot of these trials with big innovations.
And I think that we need to get much more creative to make sure that either the reach out from those academic centers go out to community centers or we do a better job placing clinical trials in community research centers to ensure better accessibility because really, logistical support, even if you cover it, even if the industry covers it or cancer care covers it or the American Cancer Society cover it or a laser X organization covers it, it’s still a challenge and a barrier.
So, I think we need to do a better job overall. The infrastructure needs to place trails where the patients are because cancers are not homogeneous across the United States. They appear in different places with higher risk and higher prevalence. And we need to use that data to place trials where the patients are.
Laura Levaas:
I agree. I’m actually located in Denver, Colorado, and I was doing some research for a blog post recently. And I went to American Cancer Society, Mark, just to look for what are the most recent statistics by state in terms of cancer. And obviously, it’s not lung cancer specific. But I was shocked to find out that Colorado has one of the highest percentages in the country of cancer occurrence. And I was surprised. So, Laura, would it be appropriate – this article that you sent me this morning from ASCO, would this be appropriate to include in our downloadable guide for our guests after the program? This was about the Affordable Care Act because we were talking about how people can get involved if they’re interested. What do you think, should we include this, Jeanne?
Jeanne Regnante:
Oh, I heard you say Laura.
Laura Levaas:
Yeah. Sorry.
Jeanne Regnante:
I think it’s a really well thought out piece to help folks understand how they can get involved with their legislators and understand that this act and this piece of legislation to advocate [inaudible] [00:50:28] specifically for patients that are on Medicaid in the United States so they can get the same benefit of routine care that Medicare patients get.
Laura Levaas:
I do have a question from Steve, one of our audience members, and he says, “Can Medigap Plan F help with paying for clinical trials? If the clinical trial accepts Medicare, would my out-of-pocket expenses be covered? I’m worried that any extra testing would be my responsibility.”
Mark Fleury:
Yeah. I’m happy to jump in with a quick answer on that.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. Thanks Mark.
Mark Fleury:
So, I mentioned a little bit before about what’s required to be covered. When you think about costs involved in a clinical trial, I’ll put them in three buckets. There is the normal routine medical care that you would get. So, for example, if you would normally get surgery and then followed up by some sort of chemotherapy, everybody’s gonna get the surgery regardless. And then say, for example, ordinarily routine care would be you would get a scan every six months after surgery, but the clinical trial because they want to collect more data wants to have a scan every three months instead of every six months. And the clinical trial is testing a new drug after surgery.
So, Medicare would pay for the routine costs, which would be the surgery and then a scan every six months. The clinical trial sponsor would pay for the drug, which is what you’re testing in the clinical trial. So, the patient doesn’t have any responsibilities for that. And since there’s basically twice the frequency of scans, the sponsor would pay for every other scan.
Now what’s important is that while Medicare covers the routine care costs, it covers them the same way it would cover any other cost. So, if you have a co-pay for a doctor’s visit that is routine, just because you’re on a clinical trial, that co-pay doesn’t disappear. So, if you have a Medigap plan that covers those co-pays, it should cover them the same way as if you were not on a clinical trial because the only responsibility for the patient is the co-pays of the routine care costs, and Medicare will pick those up.
So, anything that’s not normal from a medical standpoint will be paid for by the sponsor. Now as Jeanne aptly pointed out, if you’re coming in twice as often for tests, even if the test itself is paid for, you might be paying for the parking garage twice as often or gas to travel twice as often. And those are nonmedical costs that can add up, but they’re not really involved with insurance, but you can sometimes get money from the sponsor or other third-party support organizations like ACS.
Laura Levaas:
We have one more. Annie B, “I’m on Medicare. Where do I find a clinical trial in my town?”
Mark Fleury:
Typically, most of the ways that you find clinical trials, again, you can work directly with where you’re seeking care. So, if you have an oncologist, you can ask them about clinical trials. And if they conduct them, they will screen you for the trials that they have open at their site. If they don’t conduct clinical research, then you would either go to one of these public websites like a ClinicalTrials.gov, you could call an advocacy organization. There are several in the lung cancer space, and we can provide a number of different links to different matching engines or third-party organizations that could help match you. But clinical trials typically are not restricted based on insurance types. So, you would use the same search engines as anyone else would.
Laura Levaas:
Okay. All right. Well, I want to say thank you so much to our esteemed guests for joining us today. We learned so much today about clinical trials, Medicare and Medicaid, the different options. So many takeaways here. We will have a downloadable guide available as well as a replay of the program in case you’d like to dig in a little bit deeper.
Really, I think my takeaway from the whole program is that there are options out there. Clinical trials can be a great solution for your medical care of your disease. I personally am all for it. I know it’s a very personal decision, whether you want to participate or not. But I decided early on that I would definitely enter a clinical trial because I’m willing to sacrifice myself for future generations because there are people that came before me that did the same and I would not be here today if not for that. So, thank you again for joining us Mark, Jeanne, Laura. We very much appreciate you.
We thank AbbVie, Celgene Corporation, Daiichi Sankyo, and Novartis for their support.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/CT-Mythbusters.png600600Kara Rayburnhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngKara Rayburn2019-07-30 16:51:452020-01-08 12:29:24Clinical Trial Mythbusters: How Does Medicare or Medicaid Impact My Ability to Participate in a Clinical Trial?
I spent Thursday, April 11, 2019 at a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) workshop titled “Health Literacy in Clinical Trials: Practice and Impact” – this meeting is part of the NASEM’s ongoing Roundtable on Health Literacy. I got an invite due to a tipoff from #BSCM co-founder (and one of my besties) Alicia Staley, who was on the agenda. Since health literacy is one of my foundational interests, and part of my own work in healthcare system transformation, I was happy to trek to Washington DC for the day to see and hear what was shared in the meeting.
Statistics on clinical trial enrollment in the US, for cancer or any other medical condition, are pretty disheartening on the public engagement front. In an article in the journal Contemporary Clinical Trials titled “Clinical trials recruitment planning: A proposed framework from the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative,” the authors said, “A 2015 analysis of registered trials revealed that 19% were closed or terminated early because they could not accrue enough participants. Trials can also experience significant delays related to recruitment. As much as 86% of clinical trials do not reach recruitment targets within their specified time periods. Data suggest that study timelines have potentially doubled beyond planned enrollment periods due to low recruitment rates. Failures in meeting recruitment goals have important scientific, financial, ethical, and policy implications.”
It seems likely that a good chunk of that lack-of-engagement is due to one or more of these factors:
Low health literacy
Lack of community trust in medical research (Henrietta Lacks, anyone?)
Too many frontline clinicians – primary care MDs, NPs, RNs; community health workers – don’t have time to find trials for their patients in minutes-long clinic visits
Little widespread community-based messaging about the value of participating in medical research
On that last bullet, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the All Of Us research program last year with more public messaging than I’ve seen previously for a health research project, with 200,000 of the one million participant target registered in the program as of March 2019. By the way, I’m one of those 200,000, and you can be, too.
The keynotes, panels, and discussions at the workshop kept circling back to some core points, which seem to be foundational to making clinical research more accessible, and leading to the accelerated discovery that the public, the clinical community, and the research community are all interested in. Here are my key takeaways:
It’s the relationship, kids. Like all of healthcare, building relationships is the key to good outcomes, whether it’s one person working on managing their own health or a cancer community seeking clinical trial options.
You can’t rush relationship building. This creates tension for researchers, who are often on a one- or two-year long cycle of grant writing to secure funding for a clinical trial. Researchers can start a conversation with communities and clinics who’d be interested in participating, but holding that interest for the year or more long process of securing funding, navigating the IRB process, and launching the trial is a challenge.
“Informed consent” needs to be shifted to “educated consent,” with the people working on a decision about enrolling in a trial – the ones called “participants” or “subjects” (not my favorite word) – given all the knowledge-building material they might want or need to make a fully educated choice.
If you’d like a flavor of the conversation that took place in real time during the workshop, there was a vibrant one on Twitter with the hashtag #HealthLitRT (Health Literacy Roundtable). There was consensus, both in the room and in the online discussion, that clinical trials are themselves an outstanding health literacy building opportunity. The key will be to help the patient and research communities work together on creating the literacy tools, and the delivery processes, that will turn clinical research into a virtuous cycle of discovery, and delivery of new treatments.
Casey Quinlan covered her share of medical stories as a TV news field producer, and used healthcare as part of her observational comedy set as a standup comic. So when she got a breast cancer diagnosis five days before Christmas in 2007, she used her research, communication, and comedy skills to navigate treatment, and wrote “Cancer for Christmas: Making the Most of a Daunting Gift” about managing medical care, and the importance of health literate self-advocacy. In addition to her ongoing work as a journalist, she’s a popular speaker and thought leader on healthcare system transformation from the ground up.
In this MythBusters program, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of ASCO, Dr. Robert Schilsky, and 20+ year CML survivor, Mel Mann along with Cecelia Mann, will unpack some of the issues that have led to the lack of diversity in clinical trials and initiatives in place that are changing all of this.
Transcript:
Andrew Schorr:
And greetings from near San Diego, Carlsbad, California. I’m Andrew Schorr from Patient Power. Welcome to this Patient Empowerment Network program, the next in our series Clinical Trial Mythbusters, and this program is so important, discussing what is the value of diversity in clinical trials. And, believe me, you’ll hear it is so critical. We have to do better, and we’re going to discuss that over the next hour.
I want to thank the companies that have provided educational support through grants to the Patient Empowerment Network. They have no editorial control, but their support is welcome. And that is AbbVie Incorporated, Astellas, Celgene and Novartis. All right.
We’ve got a lot to discuss today, and we welcome your questions along the way. I want to first introduce someone who, like me, has greatly benefited from a clinical trial and believes that they are alive today because of their participation. And so joining us from Atlanta is Mel Mann along with his wife and care partner Cecelia Mann. Mel, welcome to the Patient Empowerment Network program.
Mel Mann:
Thank you very much.
Andrew Schorr:
And we’re going to hear more of Mel’s story in just a minute. I want to introduce a very prominent medical expert who joins us. He is the senior vice president and chief medical officer at really the largest cancer organization, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and that is Dr. Richard Schilsky. Dr. Schilsky, welcome to our program.
Dr. Schilsky:
Thank you, Andrew. Happy to join you.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. And are you in the Washington, DC, Virginia area?
Dr. Schilsky:
That’s where our organization is based, in Alexandria, Virginia, yes.
Andrew Schorr:
Thank you for being with us. I should mention that Dr. Schilsky has had a lot of experience related to trials. He was the head of hematology/oncology at the University of Chicago, which of course Chicago is a very diverse city, and the University of Chicago does a lot of research. And he also helped run a big research group that doctors from around the world are part of, and he did that for many years. So we’re going hear more from Dr. Schilsky in just a minute. But, first, Mel. So Mel, in the late ’90s you were dying, right, of chronic myeloid leukemia, correct?
Mel Mann:
Yes, I was.
Andrew Schorr:
Losing weight and being told that there wasn’t much to do, right?
Mel Mann:
Correct, yes.
Andrew Schorr:
Maybe a transplant. But you were in Atlanta and you went from doctor to doctor, but somehow you got to MD Anderson, a major research center in Houston. What did they offer you there?
Mel Mann:
When I first went out to MD Anderson they said they were going to put me on a clinical trial after clinical trial. And the first thing they did was increase my dose of interferon, and that was the medication, the standard therapy at the time, and then they tried different combinations of drugs, and eventually I started on different clinical trials.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. And, Cecelia, you were there in Atlanta and he was scooting over to Houston, it’s not exactly around the corner. Why were you supportive of that?
Cecelia Mann:
I was supportive of that because that was the last chance that he had to a cure and for survival. So from the very beginning, whatever type of treatment he needed when he was flying around, whether he was going looking for bone marrow transplants, doing bone marrow drives, and therefore I was supportive of. We had a five‑year‑old daughter at the time, and so anything that Mel needed I was there to support him.
Andrew Schorr:
So, Mel, this is a happy story because here we are in 2018 as we do this program and you are with us when many people with CML at the time were not with us that long. Hopefully, a transplant could be curative, but a lot of people passed away. You were lucky enough to come back as they were rolling through different trials and there was a new one that opened up for a drug called Gleevec, a pill.
Mel Mann:
Yes.
Andrew Schorr:
What happened?
Mel Mann:
Okay. So in the summer of ’98 the Phase 1 Gleevec study opened up, and I went out to MD Anderson, and I was patient number two, and I started taking it at a low dose, and it was effective for me. And eventually they increased the dose and it started changing my leukemia around to eventually I reached what they call a major molecular response. And that was 20 years ago. This summer I went over 20 years.
Andrew Schorr:
Wow. Well, Dr. Schilsky, is that an example of a patient getting, if you will, tomorrow’s medicine today, what we hope for?
Dr. Schilsky:
Absolutely. And, first of all, it’s such a wonderful story, Mel. It’s great to hear you tell it, and it’s exactly why we do research, exactly why we do clinical trials, to try to discover the new therapies that people need that will give them the kind of long‑term survival and quality of life that you’ve been experiencing. It’s just‑‑it’s wonderful.
Andrew Schorr:
So, Dr. Schilsky, let’s get into the problem. So, generally, there are many clinical trials that take longer than one would hope to fill, and the FDA and I know scientists have been seeing well, gee, how do we know what we’re testing applies to people maybe with different ethnic, gender backgrounds, a variety of situations, and often we can’t find people who fit those categories to be in. What is that‑‑how poorly have we been doing in the past with diversity in trials, and what does that mean for developing new medicines?
Dr. Schilsky:
Well, we don’t do well in almost any dimension. We don’t get enough underrepresented minorities in clinical trials. We don’t get enough older people in clinical trials. You have to remember that 60 percent of cancers occur in people 65 years and older, and yet only about 10 percent of people participating in clinical trials are 65 and older. So we are having to treat the majority of older people, and I would say the majority of minority people, with data derived from participants in clinical trials who are not like them.
We need to change that for a whole host of reasons. It’s historically been very challenging, and the problems really sort of boil down into three big areas that I think we can discuss a little bit further.
First is awareness. Many people are not aware that clinical trials are even an option for them. Many people think that a clinical trial is a last resort, and I want to dispel that myth right out of the box. Clinical trials can be a very good option for patients right from the time of their cancer diagnosis even if it’s their very first treatment. So clinical trials may be a last resort, but they don’t have to be, and there are many clinical trials that are appropriate for people right following the initial diagnosis of their cancer.
So there’s the awareness issue, and sometimes, frankly, not even the doctors are aware of what clinical trial options are for their patients. And the one thing we know for sure is that the most influential person as to whether or not a patient goes into a clinical trial is their doctor. If the doctor does not recommend it, if the doctor is not aware of it, it’s not going to happen.
But then you get into the more technical issues. There are things, there are rules for clinical trials because they are research studies. They are experiments. There are very well defined rules, most of which are in place to protect the people who are participating in the study. Some of these rules are called eligibility criteria, and they specify the characteristics of people who can enroll in the study. Well, historically, they tend to be very rigid and very limiting, and you’ll often hear people talk about how the only people who can get into clinical trials are Olympic athletes. That may be the case, but it’s not Olympic athletes that we’re treating in the clinic every day, so we need to make our clinical trials more representative so that they’re more applicable to the typical person that a doctor sees in their office.
And then there are the logistical or operational issues of the clinical trial. The clinical trial can be very burdensome. Mel just described how he had to travel from his home in Atlanta to Houston to participate in a clinical trial. Not everybody can afford to do that. Not everybody can take time away from work, time away from home. And the clinical trial requires not only that you travel sometimes but that you travel on a specific schedule because of the requirements of the trial.
So all of these are issues that are‑‑can limit participation in trials, and many of them are magnified in minority populations or in populations that don’t have the economic resources to be able to meet the requirements of the trial.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. Let’s talk about that for a minute. So, Cecelia, you go out in the community and speak to people, and you probably meet some people who maybe are diagnosed with a blood cancer, like you’re active with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society so you may speak to them, and they say even if you brought up about a trial, they say, hey, Cecelia, I’m working two jobs. Or my husband or spouse is working two jobs, and we’ve got two kids, three kids. How could we ever participate? We just can’t get away or we don’t have the family support or whatever. Those are real issues, right?
Cecelia Mann:
True. True, those are real issues, and I try to direct them towards resources that Mel and I found out about along the way. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, they have resources to help with travel, and American Cancer Society has resources that help with the hotel and lodging. And there are a number of other different types of funds that can be assessed to make that a possibility.
But you’re right, Andrew. I had one young lady at a health fair and a second cancer had popped up, and she was coming there to get information, and she was saying that they were saying it wasn’t too much they could do, and I brought up MD Anderson. And she immediately said, I can’t go out there, I have to go to work, and she turned around rough. And so when they listen to me then always glad to tell them about it and let them know there is an option and that clinical trials work, and I point to Mel, my husband, as a success story also.
Andrew Schorr:
So, Dr. Schilsky, you talked about physician awareness. It’s also about more physicians participating in trials at I think what you call the community level. So, in other words, MD Anderson and where you work, at the University of Chicago, those are big city centers and where they are in Atlanta there’s Emory and some other mainly centers, but what about out in the hinterland, if you will? Can somebody who lives there diagnosed with a cancer, how do they have access to a trial that their doctor knows about and maybe that’s more close to home, if you will?
Dr. Schilsky:
Right. So of course we know that anybody with cancer prefers to be treated in their community, and most are. So one of the goals is to be sure that oncologists practicing in all sorts of community settings have access to clinical trials. Now, one of the ways that happens is that for more than 50 years now the National Cancer Institute has actually been operating and funding a community‑based clinical trials network. It used to be called the CCOP program. That’s an acronym that we don’t have to go into. They’ve recently changed the name. It’s now called NCORP program, but‑‑that stands for, I think, the National Community Oncology Research Program.
But the point is that the program, which is in most but not all of the states in the United States, funds community oncologists to participate in NCI‑sponsored clinical trials, and there are at least 65 or 70 such clinical facilities around the country right now. So in those medical practices patients can find those clinical trials in their communities without having to travel.
There are also other community‑based networks that are active participants in cancer clinical trials. So I think at the end of the day the critical thing for patients, and this is sometimes easily forgotten because you’re so, you know, your thinking and your time and your emotion are all taken up in dealing with the cancer diagnosis. It’s really important, though, to ask the doctor, do they have access to clinical trials. Do they have a clinical trial that might be appropriate for you? And if not you might want to consider where else you could go, hopefully still relatively nearby to get access to a clinical trial.
Andrew Schorr:
Mel, so for you, you went around to some doctors who were not aware of anything new to do for you, right? And that’s still true in so many areas of cancer. Now, what do you say to patients about speaking up because Dr. Schilsky just referred to it, people are terrified. They really just want the doctor to have the answer. What do you tell people so that they maybe advocate for themselves?
Mel Mann:
Okay. So if you’re looking for a clinical trial and I’m out at, like you say, a health fair, we have a‑‑the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has something called the clinical trial support center, and they have nurses who work early in the morning till late at night. And you call them up and you tell them about your illness, and they check the availability for what clinical trials are out there, and then they narrow it down to what you actually qualify for, and then they take into consideration your finances and other issues.
And then you’re left with a number of possible clinical trials that you have, and you can take that back to the doctor and you can discuss that with him. So that’s one of the things I talk with them about.
Andrew Schorr:
I could mention, now this is really more broadly across cancer, too. So there are breast cancer groups, there are lung cancer groups, and I would just make a pitch to find out, is there a local chapter or national number for you, for the cancer you or a loved one been diagnosed with, and that’s the question.
Mel Mann:
Yes.
Andrew Schorr:
Say, look, A, I don’t want to feel I’m alone, and, B, how do I get‑‑how do I get connected with what could be lifesaving or life‑extending treatments for me and that I could discuss with my doctor. And understanding‑‑and then, boy, if there are obstacles like financial issues, logistical issues, travel issue, is there support for that.
Mel Mann:
Yes.
Andrew Schorr:
So let’s go back to the inclusion/exclusion or eligibility issue you spoke about, Dr. Schilsky, because, you know, somebody who has cancer may also have heart problems or diabetes or some other issue. Maybe they previously had another cancer, and so for the companies developing new drugs they may be happy with narrow inclusion criteria because they don’t want to have anything get in the way, some previous thing you’ve had, to affect their ability to have a new drug go on the market.
So what kind of work is going on between government and the drug manufacturers so that the criteria, not so tight, but you can still get legitimate scientific answers?
Dr. Schilsky:
Right. So, as you alluded to, Andrew, there are good reasons that there are eligibility criteria. One of them is to protect the patients in the study from circumstances that would increase their risk of participating in the study. Another is because the companies or whoever is sponsoring the study wants to be able to isolate the specific effect of what they’re studying without having a lot of confounding factors that could muddy the water and makes it difficult to interpret the results. But that said, the bad thing about all that is that the results of the study might not be applicable to the majority of people who could benefit from the treatment because they weren’t included in the study to begin with.
So one of the things that my organizations has been working on very hard over the last couple of years now, and we’ve been doing this collaboratively with people from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Cancer Institute and a lot of clinical experts and a patient advocacy group, Friends of Cancer Research, is to try to expand or broaden or simplify some of these eligibility criteria that tend to keep people off of trials and in particular tend to keep minority populations off of clinical trials.
So, for example, it’s not unusual for someone who has a new diagnosis of cancer to have previously had some kind of cancer earlier in their lives. So we might see a patient who has lung cancer who 15 years ago had a diagnosis of prostate cancer. Well, for that lung cancer patient to go on a trial that has the typical inclusion and exclusion criteria that doesn’t allow for this previous malignancy, they would be excluded even if they had been cured of that prostate cancer 15 years ago.
We also see, and you mention what we call in the medical profession comorbidity. So if someone’s got cancer and they also have heart disease, they also have diabetes, high blood pressure, anything that affects the functioning of your normal organs, can also exclude people from participating in trials, and there are certain limits that we feel can be expanded and still allow the treatment to be given safely.
So just about a year ago now we came out with a set of recommendations for how eligibility criteria can be modified to make clinical trials more inclusive. And now just recently, I’m really pleased to say, the National Cancer Institute expanded their sort of template protocol document that many investigators follow to incorporate our recommendations, so now their standard protocol includes these broader inclusion and exclusion criteria. And the FDA now is working on what they call guidance documents to advise commercial companies that are running clinical trials to do just the same thing. So we are very optimistic now that we’ve got this ball rolling. We’re going to be removing these obstacles, and we’re going to be able to have more inclusive and diverse population of patients who participate in cancer clinical trials.
Andrew Schorr:
Great leadership. I hope it works great, and we’ll be happy to support you. So, Mel and Cecelia, let’s talk about the money part of it a little bit. So you were making trips to Houston, Mel, Cecelia was home with a five‑year‑old, and so admittedly there may be hardships, financial hardships, being away from family if you have to go to a trial somewhere else, checking back. What do you say to people when they say, well, I’m just going to go with the traditional stuff. It’s close to home. In other words, if there can be programs that can help them it still takes courage, if you will. So what would you say to people about investing in their life, if you will?
Mel Mann:
Well, you know what the standard, what the current treatment is and the outcome of that, so if you want to have a different outcome then you have to try something new which is probably going to be a new drug. So you have to weigh that with the cost and the travel. Some people may not have the support, the caregiver support to go a long distance, so you have to take that into consideration. As far as the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society they do have certain funds where they can help with travel pay, co‑pay, insurance premiums, that could help alleviate some of it. So there’s a lot of stuff that’s involved, and it’s an individual decision.
Andrew Schorr:
So we’ll just make a comment, though. So, many people have a church or synagogue, friends, neighbors even if they’re living alone, but yet people are sometimes hesitant to ask for help. And I would say speak up. People do want to help you.
Dr. Schilsky, let’s talk about another reality of trials. There’s a history certainly and some fear still in the black community of whether they were tested on, without their knowledge even, going back years and the general thought, you’ve heard it through your career, I’m sure, people say, well, I don’t want to be a guinea pig for a couple reasons. One is we don’t know if it’s going to work. And second of all if there are different arms of a trial I don’t know if I’m going‑‑I’m going to go to all this trouble and expense, I don’t know if I’m going to get the good stuff. So maybe you could speak about that a little bit. First of all, the fears of being experimented on, and then also about whether you will get what could be a breakthrough.
Dr. Schilsky:
Yeah. Well, for sure, you know, there is this sort of sordid history of inappropriate experimentation on people, and clinical trials are a form of experimentation. They are a form of research. There’s no doubt about that. But clinical trials these days are highly regulated, overseen by independent groups that include patients and clinical experts that come together in committees called IRBs, Institutional Review Boards, and they evaluate on both the risks and the benefits to patients who participate in clinical trials.
They make sure that the trial has an appropriate consent process associated with it, that it’s explained in plain language to patients, so I think these days a lot of those concerns no longer exist. And I hope that people can get beyond the history that led to some of those concerns. The‑‑sorry, I lost a train of thought on the rest of your question.
Andrew Schorr:
The issue about are you going to get the good stuff.
Dr. Schilsky:
Oh, yes. So a couple points there. One point I want to make clearly is that in most cases cancer clinical trials do not include a placebo or an inactive treatment. That’s not always the case, but it’s true most of the time. So patients are always going to get at least the standard of care treatment, and of course the standard of care is what is at that time known to be the best available treatment.
The whole point of doing the research is to determine if the new thing is better, and of course we always hope it will be. It’s not always better, but sometimes it is, as in Mel’s experience. And I think this has to be clearly laid out to patients. They have to clearly understand why the research is being done. In many trials nowadays even if the patient is assigned to get the standard of care treatment there still may be an option to get the new treatment at a later point. So if the standard of care doesn’t work many times there’s still the opportunity to get the new treatment following the standard of care treatment.
So the trial really boils down to not standard versus new but new versus standard followed by new. So eventually everybody may have a chance to get the new treatment. That’s not always the case, but I think the key‑‑my key take‑home, in a sense, is that we’re doing the research because we think and we hope the new treatment is better, but we have to do the research to prove that. And everybody in a clinical trial I think can be assured that they’re going to get, at the very least, the best available standard treatment.
Andrew Schorr:
Mel, when you signed the papers to be in a trial, and you probably shared them with Cecelia, especially back in the late ’90s and I participated in one trial in 2000 and another in 2011, there’s a lot of paperwork, things in bold face written by lawyers. I didn’t always understand it. What propelled you beyond that? Was it just that, oh, my god, if I don’t get something I’m going to die? Or how did you two deal with the paperwork and feel comfortable signing on the dotted line?
Mel Mann:
Well, I saw a lot of hope in the paperwork. For example, one trial I was on was peginterferon, and I had been taking interferon every day, injecting myself, and I had to keep it refrigerated and when I travelled it made it difficult. So with peg I can take one shot a week, so that would make the cancer journey easier. It may not make me live longer, but it will improve my quality of life, so I saw my quality of life improving with that clinical trial. And I looked at the paperwork, and I went through it, and I felt comfortable with it.
Andrew Schorr:
And how about you, Cecelia? I mean, your husband says, well, I’m going to be in a trial and I’ve got to sign all these papers. Did you say at any point, wait a minute, that’s scary?
Cecelia Mann:
Well, no, I didn’t. I didn’t because with Mel, he had three years to find a marrow match, and he was at the end of year two and no match in sight. And so when he had the opportunity to go out to MD Anderson and be on a clinical trial or several, I was okay with that. I was okay with that. And I looked at it as actually being a blessing. And it turned out to be, and we’re grateful.
But I would say to anyone else who is contemplating a trial and that person and their caregiver, their spouse, to just educate yourself, and get as much information as you can, ask as many questions as you can, but please don’t just throw it away out of hand. It’s definitely worth considering.
Andrew Schorr:
Dr. Schilsky, so we have more than 50 million people with a Hispanic background in the United States, and even if many people are speaking English they may speak Spanish at home. And then when you are diagnosed with a cancer there’s a whole new language of stuff that comes into play that even if you’re fluent in English it may not be either what you easily understand or even aligns‑‑what’s being asked of you aligns with your cultural background. Okay? So how, beyond, let’s say, the African‑American community, when you look at the Hispanic community, how do we encourage participation there and get over some of these cultural or language nuances, if you will?
Dr. Schilsky:
Yeah. So it’s much the same thing in the sense that the same information has to be conveyed but it may have different meaning and different interpretations in different ethnic and cultural groups. Most clinical trials now will have a consent form that is fully translated into Spanish. But, of course, there are many different languages on the globe. When I was practicing at the University of Chicago for many years on the south side of Chicago, we had Polish‑speaking people, we had Russian‑speaking people, we had people‑‑Chinese‑speaking people.
So the requirements actually are that there must be a consent form, at least some reversion of which is translated into the first language of the patient. So if you’re a native Spanish speaker, a native Chinese speaker, you have to have, be able to see a consent form written in that language, and generally speaking you have to have your native language interpreter present in the room to help you go through the consent form and respond to your questions. And that person has to be someone who is independent from the research team so they can give you the straight answer and not be influenced by any member of the research team. So I think all of that certainly helps.
But, again, what helps a lot more is to have members of the care team who look like the patient. So we have problems with diversity in our profession as well. We have very few African‑American oncologists. We have more Spanish‑speaking oncologists, but again we have few Asian oncologists. So we need to do a better job of improving the diversity of our profession, improving the diversity of the care teams. We need nursing staff and research staff and other people who work with our patients who represent them and gain their trust, who look like them, who talk their language. And I think that will go a long way toward making people feel more comfortable about participating in clinical trials.
Andrew Schorr:
I was at a conference last week and I heard some of the patient experience, people from different drug companies talking about how they were trying to simplify their forms because I know in 2000 when I entered a Phase 2 trial there were all kinds of black boxes, you could die, you could this, everything in the kitchen sink was in it. I’m still here, and I think because of the trial, and most of the side effects I didn’t have or they were definitely handled extremely well.
So right now, where are we, Dr. Schilsky, with participation? And why is it important? In other words, in this age of personalized medicine why do we need more black people in certain trials? Like, I know in multiple myeloma, one of the areas we cover, there’s a higher incidence in the black population, right, but yet few black people are in the trials for myeloma drugs. Or maybe there are differences with Asian populations or other populations. So is it that you can’t really get a clear scientific answer on the differences? Is that it?
Dr. Schilsky:
That’s part of it. First of all, we want anybody who could potentially benefit from being in a trial to be able to be in the trial for their own personal benefit. Secondly, we need to learn about the performance of the drug or the intervention in all the diverse populations in which it might be used. And one of the things we have learned is that not all populations respond the same way. Some treatments are more toxic in certain racial or ethnic groups. Some are more effective in some racial or ethnic groups.
And, you know, since you brought up this whole new world of precision medicine, I’ll give you the example of the lung cancer drugs that are used to treat the specific mutations in a gene called EGFR. So that’s a gene which has mutated in about 15 percent of Caucasian patients with lung cancer, but it’s mutated much more commonly in Asian patients. And in fact one of the clues that there was even a gene mutation that was important in determining whether these drugs worked or not was because it was observed that the drugs worked better in the Asian patients in the clinical trials even before the genetic abnormality had been discovered. And the clue was what’s different about the Asian patients than the other patients in the trial.
So the diversity is critical to our learning and critical to our application of the therapy in all the diverse populations that we serve.
Andrew Schorr:
If you’re in our viewing community and you have a question, send your questions into questions@patientpower.info, questions@patientpower.info. We’ll continue our discussion of course, but we invite you to join in.
So, Mel, when you get to talk to people, what do you say? Somebody is sick, diagnosed with a cancer, what do you say? Dr. Schilsky was talking about not seeing clinical trials as a last resort, and you weren’t seeing it that way (?) Inaudible, but today what would you say to people when you talk to them about it?
Mel Mann:
Well, I will say explore your possibilities because there are all different opportunities at each phase. You may not go into Phase 1 but you could do a Phase 2, 3, 4‑‑or Phase 3, and you don’t know what’s going to happen in each of those phases. So you just have to see what’s out there. And I’m exhibit A, so they look at me and they say, well, I can work, and then not as suspicious, you know. We have Tuskegee, and that was 1972, and it was that dark period of cancer history so that kind of rolls around in their mind, but you can’t let that jeopardize the opportunity such as Gleevec that I took advantage of. So we know that Gleevec worked, and there are other drugs that have improved the quality of life and the lifespan of cancer patients. So definitely research those drugs.
Andrew Schorr:
Did you lose heart when you were first in one trial and the medicine wasn’t working for very long? Some would say, well, all right, I tried a trial, forget about it, you know. But you then pursued other trials. What propelled you to do that?
Mel Mann:
Well, I was still in the game, so I saw that these trials took‑‑well, first of all, I could not find a bone marrow donor, but a bone marrow transplant was pretty drastic in itself so I was looking at these other opportunities as maybe not even having to take part in‑‑have a bone marrow transplant. So that was another incentive. So‑‑and I knew that if I didn’t find one‑‑there was a very small chance, there was only about 5 percent of Americas who are on the marrow registry, so basically I was helping to build a list, maybe not for myself but for people in the future who needed a transplant.
Andrew Schorr:
Dr. Schilsky, let’s talk about the pace of research. So, first of all, if we don’t get enough participation in trials how does that slow drug development?
Dr. Schilsky:
Well, it slows it down enormously because we have to have a certain number of people in each trial to be able to get a reliable answer. And these days it’s becoming even more challenging because as we’re developing drugs that only target a specific genetic abnormality in the tumor which sometimes is very rare so we may be looking for a genetic abnormality that only occurs in 2 or 3 percent of all people with a certain kind of cancer. First you have to find the people who have that genetic abnormalities, then you have to be able to enroll them in a clinical trial. They have to be willing. They have to meet the enrollment criteria. So it can take a long time, and even a global effort to find enough people to fill out a clinical trial.
And most clinical trials in order to produce a reliable result are going to require a minimum of 50 to 100 patients. Some require many hundreds of patients or even many thousands of patients depending on the question being asked. So you can see if people are not participating it’s going to take long time to get those answers.
Andrew Schorr:
Now, Mel, you got Gleevec in a trial at least three years before it was approved, and it was approved fast because it was such a breakthrough, right? So you literally got tomorrow’s medicine today, and it saved your life in the process, right?
Mel Mann:
Yes, because I was past the three years. I was about three years and eight months in my diagnosis, so you add another three years onto that and I would not have been here.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. In my case I was in a trial related to chronic lymphocytic leukemia, three‑drug combination, and I received that in a Phase 2 trial 10 years before that was approved. So it was a long time.
So I have a question for you about personalized medicine, Dr. Schilsky. So for instance in chronic lymphocytic leukemia I’m not‑‑I’m Caucasian but I’m Ashkenazic Jewish, okay? So where we’re going with personalized medicine, are we beginning to find subsets among Caucasians, among African‑Americans, among Asians, where there are even more narrow slices to help us understand targeting of medicines and what’s effective for whom? Is that where we’re headed?
Dr. Schilsky:
Absolutely. And, as I said earlier, we’re seeing that all the time. So almost every common cancer now is being broken down into a whole basketful of rare cancers under the broad umbrella of whatever the cancer type. So lung cancer, there’s probably six or eight different kinds of lung cancer now that each have a specific genetic abnormality, that each requires a specific treatment. And many of those treatments now are FDA approved, but the first thing you have to know is does the cancer have the genetic abnormality and then what is the appropriate treatment to use. We’re seeing that in breast cancer, in melanoma, in many other kinds of cancer types.
There’s another‑‑there’s a related issue here, though, of course, which is that not everybody metabolizes drugs the same way, and so another reason to have diverse populations in a clinical trial is to learn about side effect profile of the drug, learn about the right dose of the drug to use. And we know full well, for example, that African‑Americans metabolize some drugs differently from white people, and so, depending upon how the drug is working in the body, an African‑American person might require a higher dose or a lower dose of the same drug that a white person would require in order to get the same therapeutic effect.
So it just speaks to the point again where if you don’t have diverse populations in the trials you can’t learn this stuff so that doctors then have the information they need to be able to prescribe the drug in the best way for their particular patient.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Here’s some questions we’ve been getting in. Kaitlin wrote in, Mel, she wants to know, do you still participate in follow‑up activities related to the trial you were in? So tell us about your participation and sort of follow‑up.
Mel Mann:
My follow‑up is I go out to MD Anderson twice a year, and it’s just a one‑day, one‑hour doctor visit where they take the blood work and they check and see if everything’s stable. And then when I’m back home, twice a year I have my blood work checked back at home, and that’s the extent of the follow‑up. I still have to take medication, one pill a day.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. And is that still covered by the trial?
Mel Mann:
Well, it’s covered by the trial, but my insurance also covers it. I did Gleevec for life because of the trial.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Dr. Schilsky, let me just ask you, is that a benefit typically of trials? Like with these oral cancer medicines which you know can be so expensive, if you’re in a trial for one do you get it for life or an extended time or how does that work?
Dr. Schilsky:
Depends a little bit on the trial and the sponsor for the trial, but the one thing for sure is when you’re on a trial whatever the investigational drug is, whatever is being researched, that’s provided for free. And any testing that would be considered to be for research purposes is provided by free‑‑for free. So that’s a benefit of participating in the trial.
Typically the drugs continue to be provided for free for as long as the patient continues to benefit. Now, sometimes if the drug ultimately gets FDA approved then it may be necessary at some time in the future for a patient to switch over from the research drug to the commercial drug, but of course at that time the drug is FDA approved and if the person has insurance it will generally be covered by their insurance.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. We got a question in though for you, Dr. Schilsky, from Darrell. We were talking about genomic testing to understand what version of a disease we have either because of our ethnic background or some other thing that’s going on with us. As you know, insurance companies for a while have been balking at some of these more sophisticated tests, yet we and our doctor need that for us to get what may be right on target for us. So maybe you could talk about work that ASCO’s doing at all related to that. We want the testing done, but we also want to get it paid for so we can get that right, precise care.
Dr. Schilsky:
Yeah. It’s a complicated question because the testing is done at different points in the person’s illness. And so typically a test on a tumor specimen that’s necessary to determine a standard of care treatment, and many of these tests are referred to as companion diagnostic tests. Those tests typically are covered by insurance because the treatments themselves are also covered by insurance and the only way to know if you can get the treatment is to have the test done.
Now, where it gets a little bit uncertain is when you get into this sort of large‑scale genomic testing where a patient’s tumor might be tested for many hundreds of genes not really knowing what you’re looking for and not really knowing what you’re going to do when you find it. And that is where you’re beginning to bump up a little bit against, research and that’s where the insurance companies, sometimes some are reluctant to pay for that kind of testing.
Now, at least one of those large genomic profiling tests earlier this year was approved by both the FDA and Medicare and now will be reimbursed. So that’s the good news, and I think that’s the direction that most insurance companies are heading in.
One of the things that my organization is doing to try to understand how best to use these tests and how best to use targeted cancer drugs is we’re doing our own clinical trial that’s available in 20 states around the country, so not the entire country yet, but has already enrolled more than 1200 people on the study over the last two and a half years. And we’re doing this study to understand how this kind of genomic testing is done, what kind of treatment is recommended based on the results of the genomic test and whether or not that treatment actually works.
Andrew Schorr:
Cecelia, you mentioned earlier about the lady walked into the health fair and when you started talking to her about trials she said I got to go to work, and she walked out. And Dr. Schilsky was talking about eligibility requirements, but there are other issues where the study may be asking you to come back to some place or have multiple tests with some frequency so it’s not just leaving work one time. It may be leaving work 20 times. Have you had people voice that concern to you, that it’s just‑‑what’s being requested is just too much?
Cecelia Mann:
Yes. I think the lack of convenience for people who don’t have the funds or don’t search out the funds would definitely hinder them being on a clinical trial or being open to hear about the clinical trial. So, yeah, convenience and awareness. We try to spread awareness that, yes, after we talk about the disease, the myeloma and the symptoms then we go into the resources. And, you know, I make sure I tell them about calling the information line and talking to the masters level oncologist professional there and finding out about the latest trials, the latest treatments in addition to what they’re doing currently with their doctors or their family members or friend that is diagnosed with one of the blood cancers.
Andrew Schorr:
Dr. Schilsky, she’s getting at helping people sort out what trials are available. So medical science is a moving forward, and I’m sure you as an oncologist say, hallelujah, there are more trials than ever, but it’s often not only daunting to understand any one of them but to go through a bunch of them to understand what might be right for you. So how can ASCO help that? Is it just simply educating your doctor, or what can we do for families affected by cancer so they can get at what could be a match for them?
Dr. Schilsky:
Yeah, it’s a great question. So there are a lot of resources available, as Cecelia has mentioned. We can help patients understand and even begin to sort of, you know, wade through and winnow down the potential clinical trial options for them. One things that we’re working on and very interested in doing is sort of flipping the current paradigm by which trials are done. So right now, typically speaking, the patient has to travel to whatever site has the trial available. If they’re fortunate enough that that’s their own doctor’s office, that’s great, but, as in Mel’s case he had to travel to MD Anderson to get the trial.
The technology these days is at a point where we think we can flip that. Instead of making the patient go to the trial we’re going to work toward making the trial come to the patient. So if your doctor is aware that a trial exists somewhere in the world it should be possible for the doctor to basically just go to a website, find the research study, find the consent form, find the other documents that are necessary and present that to the patient. And if the patient qualifies just sign them up instead of making the patient travel hundreds of miles away to the one place that has the trial available.
Some trials have already gone down this road, and they’ve actually been recruiting very successfully, but it’s still not the usual way in which things are done, and we think we need to try to flip things around a little bit to make it easier for the trial to come to the patients. Let the trial travel. Let’s not make the patient travel.
Andrew Schorr:
That sounds great.
Mel Mann:
Can I add something to that, Andrew?
Andrew Schorr:
Sure.
Mel Mann:
Okay. As a veteran, I was part of the VA system, and I had to go out to MD Anderson, but this summer they started something called Navigate, the VA had started something called Navigate, which partners with the NCI. And it’s at 12 sites around the country, and it’s to bring the clinical trials to the VA. It’s right there. So if it’s an NCI clinical trial then the veteran can get on that clinical trial. And there’s a lot of African‑American veterans who can take advantage of that.
Andrew Schorr:
For sure. That’s terrific. So we’re going in the right direction. One other thing I think that needs to change is we talked about the scientists, whether they’re federal government scientists or drug company scientists, and they want to get answers to a whole bunch of scientific questions. So they may say, as you write the protocol I think it is, well, you have to get so many CT scans and you have to get so many blood tests and stuff like that. And it can become onerous, Dr. Schilsky.
What’s happening in trial design so that, A, we talked about eligibility, you can get into the trial, but the things you’re asking of me may have logistical hurdles as well that you’re kind the lightening up on it to get to the key scientific question without all these other bells and whistles that make it tough on me.
Dr. Schilsky:
Yes. I like to think of it as the need to know and the nice to know, right? There are certain things you need to know in the trial to be sure that the treatment is working, the patient is safe and not having any severe side effects and things of that sort. A lot of that stuff is the same stuff that doctors order every day on their patients as part of routine clinical care, and so much of what needs to be collected in clinical trials really aligns pretty well with standard of care.
Now, that said, because clinical trials are research and because there’s always new frontiers to explore, sometimes testing in a clinical trial extends beyond what the standard of care is. Sometimes patients are asked to give extra specimens of their blood, of their normal tissues, of their tumor tissues. Extra biopsies might be required, things of that sort. Patients need to understand why they’re being asked to do that, what those specimens are going to be used for, how is it going to advance research.
And, frankly, they’re very important to expanding the scope of the research. So, for example, oftentimes those specimens are used. If the treatment doesn’t work in a patient having those specimens can help the scientists understand why the treatment didn’t work, and that opens up a whole new horizon to explore to potentially make the treatment better in other patients.
Andrew Schorr:
Mel, do you recognize that by being in a trial and the work that you and Cecelia have been doing that you’ve probably helped thousands of patients by first being in a trial and then you and Cecelia talking about it?
Mel Mann:
Yeah. Yeah. I guess that’s kind of hard sometimes. You don’t see yourself in that role, but as I look back on it, yes.
Andrew Schorr:
Cecelia, you’ve probably talked to a lot of people. Have you seen a change where‑‑you’ve been doing this for a number of years where earlier on people said no, no, no. Are people more receptive? Do you see a change going on? Let’s say in the African‑American community, do you think people are a little more receptive?
Cecelia Mann:
Yes, I think so. I think they are more receptive, and this has a lot to do with education and awareness, and that’s what we are out there doing when we are out there in the community. And the more they hear about it and the more they read about it and the more they can see examples like Melvin, and we know one or two other people that we’ve met that were also on a clinical trial. One is in our church, and he had a type of leukemia, and we didn’t know why he was sick. But he is doing very well.
And so the more we can get those examples out there in the community of successful clinical trial patients, it really helps and goes a long way toward helping people of color relax and come aboard. And I just say, please, do your research, educate yourself and ask questions and please stay open and don’t dismiss clinical trials out of hand.
Dr. Schilsky:
And, Andrew, if I could just add to that. I just want to make the point that it’s people like Mel who are creating the future. Everything we know about how to treat cancer we learned from the people who participated in the clinical trials. We’ve been doing clinical trials in cancer for at least 70 years, and all of the standard of care treatments that we have today came from the participation of people in clinical trials. And that’s how we make progress. That’s how we’ll continue to make progress.
So it’s the clinical trial participants who, sure, they’re in it for themselves. We understand that. They’re looking for a new treatment, a better outcome, but they are the heroes of oncology because they are paving the way, trying the course and ultimately making a better future for every cancer patient who follows them.
Andrew Schorr:
Amen. Let me just recap a couple of things, and correct me if I get anything wrong, either of you. So, first of all, Dr. Schilsky, I know there are more trials now than ever before, and they’re now looking at these rare subtypes as well, and so if we participate we may get the benefit of tomorrow’s benefit today. Cecelia was talking about assistance programs, people to help you sort it out, that you are noticing how there are difference among us about the ways that drugs are effective or not, and that’s so important to learn.
If we partner with you, Dr. Schilsky, and the many thousands of oncologists and researchers that you represent, can we get to the goal line faster? In other words, are you hopeful that if we really consider trials and participate in trials and stay in trials and the different groups that we can get closer to cancer cures?
Dr. Schilsky:
Absolutely. I mean, we have more and better cancer treatments today than we’ve ever had before. We have all sorts of new and hopeful treatments on the horizon. We have to prove that they are safe and effective treatments to get them out there into routine clinical practice, and that’s where the clinical trials come in. So the more people who participate in trials the more quickly those trials can be completed and give us an answer, then the more quickly those drugs will make their way into standard clinical practice where everybody can benefit from them.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. So a couple of to‑dos for our audience if you’re a patient or a loved one or however you hear this. Ask your doctor about whether trials apply to you or your loved one who is diagnosed with cancer even if it’s on day one. You don’t have to be at death’s door. You’ve been diagnosed or a diagnosis is suspected, what tests can we do, how do we know what we’re dealing with, and when we look at the treatment options is a trial a possibility if that makes sense, right?
Dr. Schilsky:
Absolutely.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Step two, are there resources to help me overcome any obstacles I may have to participation, first understanding the trial, understanding it in my first language, sorting out is it right for me, getting to where it is and then staying in the trial because many people, unfortunately, don’t stay in the trial and so how do be help the trial get to the goal line?
And then lastly, Dr. Schilsky, it sounds like you’re doing a lot at the community level to have more doctors have an easier time of the bureaucracy that we’ve had with trials before and the understanding of this flood of trials that’s happening, right?
Dr. Schilsky:
Absolutely. And, you know, to be perfectly honest, the clinical trial community has‑‑we ourselves have created some of the bureaucracy, some of the excess regulation, some of the barriers to participation. It’s up to us to strip those away and solve the problem and make clinical trials more broadly available. We are working very hard now to make that happen.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. So whatever community you’re in. I’m in the Ashkenazic Jewish community. Mel and Cecelia are in the African‑American community. We have people watching who are in the Hispanic community, the Asian community. If you have benefited from a trial, talk it up, right? Cecelia, people should talk it up, correct?
Cecelia Mann:
Exactly, yes. Please, talk it up.
Mel Mann:
Yes.
Andrew Schorr:
Mel, thank you. I wish you really continued good health. How many years has it been since you were diagnosed?
Mel Mann:
Well, in about two months it will be 24 years.
Andrew Schorr:
Twenty‑four years, and for me it’s 22 years. And had there not been trials either that we were in or somebody else was in we wouldn’t be here.
Mel Mann:
Yes.
Andrew Schorr:
So, thank you. And also, Cecelia, thank you for being a community activist when it comes to trials and being supportive of Mel as he’s been in a trial because some other people would say, you can’t go there, you can’t do this, and you’ve been supportive every step of the way. Thank you for that.
Cecelia Mann:
Oh, you’re so welcome. It was a pleasure to do it.
Andrew Schorr:
Mel and Cecelia Mann from Atlanta. And Dr. Richard Schilsky, you’ve devoted your life to this, Dr. Schilsky, and I just want to say on behalf of the cancer patient community thank you and thank you for the leadership that ASCO is trying to do, both with changing research requirements, working with government, working with industry, and you thank you personally for your devotion to us. I really appreciate you being with us.
Dr. Schilsky:
It was my great pleasure. And, again, congratulations to Mel and Cecelia.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Thank you all. So this is what we do with our Clinical Trials Mythbusters program. Please tell others about it. The replay is available very shortly and all kinds of little highlights that we’ve done today. But what’s important is wherever you are is remember we can’t develop new medicines unless all of us work together to participate to get the scientific answers that apply to us, whatever our unique situation is, and then we can work with government to approve new medicines, get them on the market and so many people can benefit in the US and worldwide.
Thank you so much for being with us on this Patient Empowerment Network program. I’m gratified to be part of it. Thanks too to our financial supporters AbbVie, Astellas, Celgene and Novartis and their dedication to drug development and supporting and sponsoring clinical trials. I’m Andrew Schorr near San Diego. Remember, knowledge can be the best medicine of all.
Please remember the opinions expressed on Patient Empowerment Network (PEN) are not necessarily the views of our sponsors, contributors, partners or PEN. Our discussions are not a substitute for seeking medical advice or care from your own doctor. That’s how you’ll get care that’s most appropriate for you.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/What-Is-the-Value-of-Diversity-in-Clinical-Trials_-1.png600600PEN Editorial Staffhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngPEN Editorial Staff2018-12-05 19:48:512020-01-08 12:33:32What Is the Value of Diversity in Clinical Trials?
Clinical trials offer tomorrow’s medicine today, but more often than not, only a small fraction of patients ultimately enroll in a trial due to barriers posed by financial logistics, distrust and travel, to name a few. In this MythBusters program, we will examine the barriers to enrollment, evaluate patient needs and discuss resources to help guide people through the clinical trial process with the help from two experts, Dana Dornsife of Lazarex Foundation and Myeloma Survivor Reina Weiner.
Transcript:
Andrew: Hello from Carlsbad, California, near San Diego. I’m Andrew Schorr from Patient Power. Welcome to today’s Patient Empowerment Network program, clinical trials myth busters and actionable advice, resources for knocking down obstacles to trial participation. I wanna thank the companies that have provided financial support for this program. They have no editorial control, but we definitely thank them for their support. Those supporters are AbbVie Incorporated, Astellas, Celgene Corporation, and Novartis.
Okay. We have a lot to talk about. First of all, I’ll just say I’ve been in two clinical trials; one Phase 2 many years ago at MD Anderson for the leukemia I have, chronic lymphocytic leukemia. And that gave me tomorrow’s medicine today. It worked, but I had travel far to do it and there were costs involved.
And then I was in a second Phase 3 trial close to home, and that was good too, and discovered another cancer that I have, myelofibrosis, through the monitoring in the trial. So, I’m a believer, but there are obstacles, and let’s talk about some of these. And we’re gonna give you some very specific resources to overcome these obstacles, so that hopefully, if a clinical trial is right for you, you can participate, you can feel good about it, and you can move medical science along to help everyone who is dealing with that condition.
So, what are some of the issues? Financial, of course; logistical issues, of course; distrust, are they really gonna take care of you or are they gonna protect your safety? Is it really right? And are you being given the straight scoop? What about travel costs? I went from Seattle to Houston, Texas a few times. Costly, okay? Stay in a hotel. It’s costly. Get a babysitter, leave work; costly.
The guinea pig syndrome; you’ve heard about it so many times. Are they gonna experiment on you, and are they really protecting you, and are you a number, or you are a person with cancer, or your loved one? And then is your medical team that you’re talking to about your treatment, are they informed about clinical trials? Or are they pooh-poohing clinical trials because they don’t wanna do the paperwork, or it’s happening down the road and not at their clinic. Lots of issues; we’ll talk about that.
Okay, I got some great helpers. So, first let’s go to Asheville, North Carolina, and you are used to live in Charlotte. Reina Weiner joins us. Reina, welcome to our program today. There we go. Say that again, Reina, you were muted.
Reina: Thank you.
Andrew: Okay. Now we should tell you that last June, well, June of 2017, Reina had a autologous transplant for multiple myeloma. And along the way, leading up to that, over many years she was in four trials. So, first of all, Reina, let’s start with what’s most important. Post-transplant, how are you feeling today?
Reina: I’m feeling very well. Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew: Okay, and what’s coming up at the beginning of September?
Reina: What is coming up at the – oh, a big party is coming up. Our children are throwing us our 50th wedding anniversary party, so that’s been cool.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, congratulations. And you’ve been dealing with what became multiple myeloma since 1999. We’re gonna come back and track that in a minute, as far as the steps along the way, the concerns you had or not at different times about being in four clinical trials.
And now let’s go up near San Francisco in the East Bay of San Francisco Bay, Danville, California. Dana Dornsife. And Dana is the Chairman of the Lazarex Cancer Foundation. Dana, thank you so much for being with us.
Dana: Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew: Okay. Now ladies and gentlemen, I want you to know Dana and her husband and her family, overall, they’re incredibly philanthropic across a number of issues that are faced globally, and also in the US. But one of them is helping people with the financial issues that prevent them from being a clinical trial. So, Dana, this is a personal story for you, so maybe you could just tell us why did you start the foundation? It was a family issue.
Dana: It was a family issue, and that family issue really revealed to me a gap that exists in cancer care for advanced-stage patients who want to remain in their battle with cancer through clinical trial participation. My youngest sister’s husband, Mike, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in his early 40s. He was given one half of one percent chance to live, and at the time 35,000 people a year were diagnosed, and 35,000 people a year were dying from pancreatic cancer.
So, we decided as a family that if Mike wanted different results that we would need to do something different. And Mike and Erin went ahead and pursued standard of care, and I was tasked with identifying clinical trial opportunities for Mike. And, of course, that sounds very linear, but in fact, for a layperson it was a very difficult task to undertake. I did identify some trial opportunities for Mike. He did participate in a trial and responded well for a period of time, he had good quality of life.
And during that period of time he was meeting people who were asking him, “Hey, what are you doing? I wanna do what you’re doing.” And he would say to them, “Oh, just call my sister-in-law, Dana. She’ll help you.” And that’s literally how this organization began. Through those phone calls that I was receiving from other pancreatic cancer patients, I began to understand that Mike was able to take advantage of medical breakthroughs in clinical trials because he had a family who could afford to support him through the process. And all of these other families that I was talking to, they just didn’t have the financial wherewithal.
So, we started Lazarex in order to fill that gap and help people identify clinical trial opportunities, and then provide financial assistance to them to help cover the out-of-pocket expenses that create huge barriers for patients who are already experiencing financial toxicity due to their disease.
Andrew: Well, thank you for what you do. And we’re gonna talk a lot along the way about resources. There’s a downloadable guide that you’ll be provided with, along with a link to the replay of this program. And that’s gonna have specific resources that you can access, whether it’s financial issues, other issues you may be facing. So, look for that.
Today we’re really focused on actionable resources. So, let’s go to Reina for second. So, Reina, you had been in the pharmaceutical industry.
Reina: Yes, I had.
Andrew: So, you knew about drug development, and you understood about clinical trials. So, I’m willing to bet you were pretty proactive. People who weren’t in the field, they don’t know from clinical trials, and maybe they’d been worried about it. They’ve worried would they be experimented on, would they be a number and not name, would they get quality care. But you were probably, I have a feeling, pretty proactive. And you write about that. I know you have a book as well. So, is that Step 1 for people to speak up for themselves?
Reina: It is Step 1; absolutely, Step 1. And what I found is, first of all, people don’t know about trials. And if you go to a small community practice where they’re very busy, they don’t have the time, they don’t have the staff to really educate patients about trials, the best, best step for patients to take is to ask, “Is there a clinical trial that might be appropriate for me?” That’s huge.
Even when I went to a very well respected hospital and there was a researcher who was following me as I had smoldering myeloma and the numbers kept going up and up and up. I said is there – because I was living close to the NCI – is there a trial that would be appropriate to me at the NCI. And he said just a minute, turned around, went to his computer, found the trial and that’s how I got in.
Andrew: But it wasn’t at where you were receiving care or being monitored at that time. It was somewhere else.
Reina: It was not. It was at somewhere else.
Andrew: Okay. Dana, is one of the obstacles, not just financial, or maybe it’s even the business of cancer where if an oncology practice that you’re going to that’s maybe close to home is not doing the trial, maybe it’s not even in their financial interests to tell you. I mean, is there an awareness issue, do you feel?
Dana: There’s a huge awareness issue there, Andrew. And it all starts with knowledge is power, right, so I completely agreement with Reina’s comment about one of the first questions you need to ask is, is there a clinical trial out there for me because many doctors who are in community environments don’t offer that information. It’s not what they do every day. They’re there to administer standard of care. Only 6 percent of doctors actually engage in conversation with their patients about clinical trials, and that’s usually the 6 percent who are associated with research universities, right?
So, knowledge is power. If the patient doesn’t know about a clinical trial, they’re never going to participate. But once you find out and once you’ve identified an opportunity, the second biggest hurdle is that out-of-pocket expenses associated because most patients have been dealing with their disease for a longer period of time, and they’re basically broken in every way: physically, emotionally, spiritually, and, sadly, financially.
So, patients start to make decisions about the outcome of their care based on the size of their checkbook, and not focused on what’s best for them. And so, Lazarex eliminates that financial barrier as well to help patients say, “Yes, I can participate,” and we can get them where they need to be when they need to be there.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Andrew, because there are many other barriers that exist; socioeconomic barriers, language, culture, historical barriers. And we are tackling all of those barriers one at a time. But really, the biggest two barriers are knowledge and financial.
Andrew: Right. And you mentioned about the historical barriers. Some people know about the Tuskegee experiments with African-American people, so in the African-American community, there still is a distrust among some people. Yet if you think about it from the FDA’s point of view where a company that’s developing a drug, or the NIH, they say okay, how does it work on broader populations or different ethnic groups or different ages or genders, et cetera?
They want to understand that data, and so not just having a number of people participating in the trial, but having it reach people who are in different situations, if you will. And so –
Reina: And if I may – ooh, I’m sorry.
Andrew: Reina, please, go ahead.
Reina: Well, if I may say that because people don’t know about it and the trials, the best trials, are trials with a variety of patients, but they do try to accrue populations who are certain ages, certain genders, ethnic groups, whatever they can get. And only 3 to 5 percent of patients participate, cancer patients, participate in clinical trials, and so much is lost if people don’t participate.
Andrew: Here in San Diego it’s sort of a pocket of a lot of medical research. There’s a lot up in your area, Dana, in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. I mean, it’s in North Carolina in the research triangle where that’s home state for Reina. And not to disclude others, and then certainly up around Boston. There are like companies all over the place and many of them are in earlier drug developments.
So, when you talk about immuno-oncology now, can we harness our immune system with the help of some medicine to fight the cancer, and I know some people who’ve received it; lung cancer patients who are living, et cetera, melanoma patients who are living for an extended time. These companies can’t move forward unless there’re people who are in the trials. So, the FDA says where’s your data? And they’re saying well, we’re trying, but we haven’t been able to complete this trial. Right, Dana? So, we can’t move towards cures unless we all come together.
Dana: That’s exactly right. So, let me just throw a few statistics out at you that I found astounding when I learned of them. So, we have a 48 percent failure rate of clinical trials, and it’s not because the drug didn’t work. We will never know, quite frankly, if the drug would have worked or not. And we will never know because there weren’t enough patients enrolled in the trials to find out.
So, 11 percent of trials never enroll a single patient, if you can believe that. So, here we are with an almost 50 percent failure rate, and yet we have 600,000 patients a year in this country who are dying from cancer. So, there’s this incredible disconnect between the thousands of patients who would participate in clinical trials if they could, and the thousands of clinical trials that need patients to participate in order to succeed. And without successfully completing those trials, those drugs are never going to get market to help the cancer patients that they are intended to serve and help.
That’s why Lazarex Cancer Foundation exists, and that’s why removing the barriers to clinical trials is so important. Our process does not lend itself well to that. And I just want to take a step back, Andrew, to address the minority participation in clinical trials. We all understand because of epigenetics and, yeah, advances in medical science that we need to have the full spectrum of our population participating in clinical trials. But that doesn’t happen. When you look at the 5 percent of patients who actually participate and you break it down ethnically and racially, less than 5 percent are from minority communities combined.
So, in theory, though we say we understand the importance of that, we’re actually not in practice doing what needs to be done. And so a lot of our work is also focused on reaching out to those socioeconomically challenged and racial and ethnic minority communities to raise awareness and help people like you’re doing on this program dispel the myths around clinical trials, so that they’re more inclined to ask better questions.
Andrew: Right. So, so important, and I applaud for that work. We’re gonna talk about the financial process in a second. Reina, so you were involved in a National Institutes of Health or National Cancer Institute trial.
Reina: Yes.
Andrew: A couple of them, I think, and one at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York’s premier resources. So, we talked about your tip was you gotta speak up and ask about trials, where they’re at that center, wherever you are, by XYZ oncology in a suburban area, whatever it is or not. So, what’s Step 2? So, for instance, now I understand there are people – and Dana, I’d like your comment on it too.
At some clinics now where there are clinical trial – there are nurse navigators, but often sometimes there are clinical trial navigators too, but often you gotta ask about that too, right, Reina? I mean, it’s speaking up and looking for the resources that are available to you there or wherever you choose to go, right?
Dana: Yes, and there are organizations like Dana’s who help people do clinical trial searches because that’s a bit overwhelming when you are already frightened, you already have the financial issues coming up. And like you mentioned, logistical issues. So, there is Dana’s organization; therefore, myeloma, the SparkCures. There’s the MMRF. There’s the International Myeloma Foundation. There is something called Cis Crypt. And so, they will help you find a trial.
And there are lots of regional trials groups, so you may not need to go to the big, big research center. They might be able to do it locally for you. But I always want to bring up the fact that there’s so much misinformation about trials and what it entails. There’s a tremendous amount of fear. And when I went on the first trial, as I wrote about a little blog recently, everybody said to my husband – well, not everybody, but an awful lot of people said why would you let your wife going in a clinical trial? She’s definitely gonna be a guinea pig.
And I can tell you very, very, very clearly that you get so much care. There’s so much documentation. And the patient’s health is never sacrificed for the research ever. And so, and you sign a consent form, so you’re very clear about what is going to happen. And yes, there’s more there’s more bloodwork. Yes, there are more biopsies. And it’s part of research. And when you sign up, you sign up. And I had more than I’d like to even talk about, but I feel very grateful and very humbled for the care that I received.
And I can tell you, too, that I talked to other people on the trial. And yes, they hope to gain better control of their cancer. But, in addition, they really hope to help the next group of patients who are coming up, so that these new treatments actually happen.
Andrew: I feel the same way. I was in a trial at MD Anderson in 2000, and the three-drug combination I got was not approved till ten years later, but they learned a lot. And you were on a three-drug combination, which I think still has not been approved for first line, but it’s is widely used, I think.
Dana: Right.
Andrew: So, in multiple myeloma. I wanted to mention some other resources, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society also has a resource center. You can call them. So, there’re these different groups that help you identify a trial, and doctors who specialize, so let’s say pancreatic cancer, you mentioned earlier Dana. I got a call from a friend in Miami, “How do I find a pancreatic cancer specialist?” And I connected them with PanCAN, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network in Los Angeles, who knows who are the doctors who have the most experience with that.
Now, Dana, so then the next thing comes up is alright, I’ve identified the trial, but it’s not where I am. So, now we talk about logistics and finance. So, let’s say somebody calls your foundation. Tell us how it works. So, I don’t have the resources. Maybe they live in Northern California and the trial is in Southern California or in Salt Lake City. What happens next?
Dana: So, Andrew, in some cases it’s not even that distance. In some cases it’s getting from Sacramento to San Francisco, which is literally a one hour, one-and-a-half hours without traffic, in your car. And sometimes it’s a tank of gas, a bridge toll, and parking. I mean, we’re not talking about thousands of dollars in some cases, but it’s still the difference between life and death.
When someone calls Lazarex Cancer Foundation, they can contact us directly. We have a financial application that we use to determine the degree of eligibility for patients to get their out-of-pocket expenses reimbursed. Or they can be referred to us by their social worker at the institution where they are receiving, or thinking about participating in a clinical trial.
We take a look at the household income of the patient, and I believe our guidelines are very generous. We go up to seven times the federal poverty guidelines for patients. And we arrived at that number through trial and error. Our goal is to help as many patients as possible participate in clinical trials, and turn away as few as possible. And then we reimburse on a sliding scale from 100 percent to 75 percent to 50 percent depending upon your household income.
And it’s a pretty easy process to go through in order to be enrolled and receive the reimbursement. And then we reimburse our patients monthly, on a monthly basis. And in some cases, we’ve been working with patients, we follow them, like Reina, through two, three, four clinical trials. And we’ve been supporting them in trials for years. And without doing what we do, they may not be here with us today.
Andrew: Well, I’m sure you’ve saved some lives and lengthened some lives. Reina, so you were in the pharmaceutical industry and in oncology, I believe, before all of this started happening to you. And you’ve continued teaching nurses and devoting yourself to education and your book and your blogs. Thank you for all that. Maybe that’s what life’s about.
But knowing on the inside there are pharmaceutical programs, in some cases, I think, particularly for rare cancers where they may provide assistance. They can’t pay you to be in the trial, but there are at times assistance and travel logistics, particularly for rare cancers where maybe the trial is not, not one hour away. Am I right, Reina? Are you familiar?
Reina: Oh, there are. And sometimes when I was working, there would be a patient who had a cancer that really was not aligned with a particular treatment that would be effective for them. And so, the doctor wanted to try an off-label use of a product, and so then they would come to me and asked me if I could get the pharmaceutical company to provide the drug for free.
And sometimes it takes a little doing, but I was concerned about the patient and hoping to get them a better quality of life, if not an extended period of life. And so, yeah, the company would do that. Not every day, not all the time, but if the company had evidence that this was a patient who would benefit from the off-label use of a product then they would help them out.
Andrew: Okay. So, Dana, related to other organizations providing assistance, and I recently interviewed someone from the Family Reach Foundation where they help with rent or things, groceries, things like that. So, somebody says, “Oh my God, I’m afraid of a trial, I can’t go there,” or if they hear about it and they say, “Hmm, well, maybe I could, but I’d have to leave work, or maybe my spouse would have to leave work, we’d have to find somebody to pick up the kids from school, oh my God.” There are organizations that can help with some of these family processes, aren’t there?
Dana: Absolutely. And I think we’ve provided the Patient Empowerment Network with a list of those. 21st Century C.A.R.E. is an organization that provides patients with immediate financial assistance for expenses related to active cancer treatments. Cancer Care provides assistance for cancer-related costs. There’s a Cancer Care Co-Payment Assistance Foundation. We get that question a lot.
We’ll help with the out-of-pocket travel expenses, and in fact, some of the medical and diagnostic expenses that aren’t covered by insurance. When you’re participating in a trial, sometimes you have to get more stems than insurance will cover or whatever. But co-pays are a big deal for people to be able to afford those, and so, that is another organization that can help. Patient Advocate Foundation, which is an underinsured resource directory.
So, there are a lot of you nonprofits out there who exist to support patients through the fifth process. It’s just a matter of helping patients really understand and put together all of those resources in a way that they can access them.
Andrew: Okay. So, Reina, you’ve been through it four times, and you’re a pretty savvy person. Not all of us know as much, so help us now. So, one of the questions in a trial is, and in cancer, am I gonna get what I describe as the good stuff, knowing that the good stuff that’s being tried may not be good. I mean, it may not work out. There are trials that go bust. Not just for not getting people, but they got people, but it wasn’t as effective as they hoped it would be.
But let’s say we’ve done our homework and we go to a certain clinic, but it’s some sorta controlled trial. We don’t know whether we’ll be in the arm. So, was a concern for you? Were you gonna get the good stuff, and why do it?
Reina: Well, no, really, Andrew, because I know that like if it’s a Phase 3 trial, so you’re comparing standard of care versus the newest and hopefully the latest and greatest. If it turns out that one arm of the trial really shows a significant improvement, patients are always switched to the more effective arm of the trial. They don’t leave you on this arm of the trial thinking well, what the heck, we’ll just leave you there and see how the research pans out. So, they are always switched over to the most effective.
So, I wasn’t really concerned about that. And in the Phase 2 trial, it’s just seeing if the product was effective. And so, that was obviously not a concern for me. So, it worked out, and I do think, though, like what Dana does is absolutely wonderful at totally, totally, totally past wonderful.
But I always try to let people know who have friends and family who are facing some chronic significant illness that don’t just call and say let me know, let me know if I can help you because that’s so ambiguous. And most people will not call because they have pride or they think they can do it all by themselves.
So, I always try to suggest to people that if you’re calling somebody who you think might need some help, be specific. Call and say, “Can I walk the dog? I’m going to the grocery store in an hour. Is there something I can pick up for you? Can I mow the grass?” Anything that will help, but make sure that you are specific in your offering.
Andrew: I want to talk about a related issue. You use the word pride. Some people, maybe in some cases it’s even shame. They developed a certain cancer. Where these are maybe middle-class people who’ve had some resources. They’ve been paying their mortgage. They’ve been paying their expenses, making do. But now they get hit with a cancer diagnosis, which is catastrophic, and there is help available, Dana, but they’re too proud to ask for it when this could happen to anybody. And maybe you’ve even countered that along the way or know there’re people out there. What would you say to people, to not be shamed and to speak up?
Dana: Yeah. Well, sadly, one in three women will be diagnosed with cancer, and one in two men. And so, this is not an uncommon scenario, right? The likelihood of knowing someone who will receive a cancer diagnosis is very likely. So, I think that patients have to understand that pride doesn’t help you in your process with battling this disease. You have to take advantage of every opportunity that’s out there in order to come out on the positive side of this experience. And if you don’t take advantage of every opportunity, you may not.
And so, it’s one of those things that we just have to deal with right from the beginning, and just say okay, again, knowledge is power. I’m going to surround myself or engage with the people that are around me who want to help me. And you have to put that team together because you will need your team with this disease.
Andrew: Okay, so great advice. Reina, part of your team maybe could be the first doctor you saw who gave you the diagnosis, but they might not be the one where a trial was offered. So, first step is you talked about speaking up, but it takes a lot of courage to say to the doctor in the white coat with all the letters after their name, you know, thank you so much, Doctor, and I’ve either found out about a trial, or your turned and typed it in somewhere else. I hope you don’t mind, but I am going to go over there. Maybe you can advise me along the way.
But that takes courage because people are terrified, and they may be bold in principal in that situation with the person in the white coat. What advice would you give?
Reina: Ooh, well, that’s a big one for a lot of people. And, really, you know what, I imagined that it would be people who are older, who come from a generation where the doctor has the final word. But what I found out when I was writing my third book is that there were younger people who also feel very uncomfortable speaking up, asking a doctor, and so forth. But really, what to really put in your little mind and in your heart is this your life.
This is not just kind of a trip to the mall. This is really important for you to either improve the quality of your life or extend the quality of life, so take a deep breath, be very polite, and I think most doctors who are professional and open-minded will hear what you have to say if you present it in a way that they can hear. And if they really don’t hear you then it might be time to have a look around to see who will.
And, really, the bottom line is you need to trust yourself. And if you feel that this is really right, that there is a clinical trial that you would be eligible for and you can participate in with Dana’s help, with the financial, with the logistics, and so forth. Like I said, you just take a deep breath. And most doctors, like I said, really want the best for you.
Andrew: Okay, let’s talk about something that comes up. One of the things for people is the criteria of different trials. Dana, I don’t know if this is in your area, too, related to financial, but people let’s say okay, I wanna be in a trial, but the criteria are so narrow that I really wanna be in the trial, but they say I can’t.
Dana: Yeah, so that is a sad reality in many cases. And I refer to this as Clinical Trial Nirvana Syndrome where as a drug sponsor for trial, you want to attract the healthiest patients you can to participate in your trial, so that you have the greatest chance of success. But, unfortunately, in many instances, in most instances, a cancer diagnosis is accompanied by other comorbidities like heart disease or diabetes or other maladies that would preclude a patient from being able to participate in a trial.
So, that is an area that we are looking into and trying to – we have several proposals out there with various aspects of our government to try and really take a closer look at that, to try and make the trial makeup in relation to patient participants better mirror the realities of our situation because the likelihood of someone, if the drug gets approved, taking that drug and having a comorbidity is pretty likely.
And yet we won’t know what will happen there, right. So, we have to drill down on these issues and it’s a great, great issue to bring up. So, we’ve got a lot of work to do ahead of us.
Andrew: Right. And another thing that comes up too, and Kevin sent in a question. Kevin, thank you for this, matching what’s available in clinical trials to where you are in your journey with an illness. So, on Day 1 you’re diagnosed. I know Esther and I, we were crying and almost on the floor. And I thought I would be dead the next day. And it really took a while to overcome the terror of the diagnosis. And so, we were not even – well, the doctor wasn’t talking about trials; we wouldn’t have been hearing it anyway.
And some of us, thank God, with some trials, with some cancers now, are blessed with living longer and we start to learn. And then we want to know, in our situation, what applies to us. So, I know there are a lot of efforts being made to match trial offerings to where you are and what you might need to know now, what might need to be offering.
And some of you have heard this term, artificial intelligence, where we in the Internet business are all trying to fine tune what we’re suggesting or putting in front of you based on who you are and where you are, recognizing privacy and all those kinda things to make it more manageable.
We still have a long way to go. I mean, we have clinicaltrials.gov, but it’s not tied to where I am, who I am, where I am in my journey. It’s just what’s being done in a certain illness, right, Reina?
Reina: Yes.
Andrew: So, we have to refine our tools.
Reina: Absolutely.
Andrew: We have to refine our tools. Well, we’ve been getting in a number of questions. So, here’s one. So, David; so, he says as the excessive use of CT scans in clinical practice moves away from being the norm, have they lessened their use in clinical trials? In other words, this is about testing, and maybe it’s about the requirements.
Dana, I don’t know if you have feelings about it, but the scientists who are doing these trials, they wanna know everything. They would like to test us. So, the CT scan, and I mean I’m gonna have one next week, but it has radiation, right?
Dana: Right.
Andrew: So, let’s do a bunch of CT scans. No, let’s do a bunch of bone marrow biopsies. No. So, I’m saying I’m sorry. Not just do I have to pay something for these tests, or is there a co-pay or whatever, but also am I gonna be radiated? Am I gonna be poked? So, what about those issues? Is there dialogue going on, not just to help us financially, but also make it less onerous, I guess?
Dana: Yes, in fact there is dialogue going on about that, and it’s good, heartfelt dialogue. And it’s coming from a myriad of stakeholders, right, not just from patient advocacy organizations, but also from within industry insurers. And the whole goal is to okay, let’s stop looking at patients as a chart or a number on a piece of paper, and let’s understand that these are living, breathing human beings who are voluntarily participating in this clinical trial process for the benefit of not only themselves, but future patients to come and our industry.
And let’s start treating patients as humans who are participating, and let’s see what we can do to lessen the number of visits or minimize the number of scans and blood work, et cetera. So, there is active dialogue around that, and I think there’s a much higher degree of sensitivity on behalf of the teams who are actually putting the protocols together now.
Andrew: All right, I think so. And I know in some cases they’re doing what’s called trial simulations with a panel of patients and saying okay, we’re trying to answer these scientific questions and see if this drug that’s in development can do better for patients and would require so many office visits. Or so many, you come to the site, but so many could be done, maybe with your local doctor if that’s closer to home. So many blood tests, so many CT scans, so many biopsies. Imagine lung cancer patients with another lung biopsy. Not fun, and often not available.
So, there are all these kind of questions. And I think that’s going on although it needs to happen more. Now Dana, do you talk to the pharmaceutical industry? We had a question from Vi Life wanting to know related to trial awareness. Beyond the financial, do you work with pharmaceutical companies at all, as you are now, today? I mean, what we’re doing here is just to raise awareness about trials or other programs that you may do.
Dana: So, we are engaging with pharma right now. We were very fortunate to work with the FDA earlier this year in securing language around reimbursement of patients’ out-of-pocket expenses associated with clinical trials. There was some very nebulous language out there that was really preventing pharma from being able to support programs like ours.
And what we’re doing now is, in addition to we’re bridging this gap for patients that exist every day by reimbursing patients, but that is not a sustainable business model. It’s noble, but we have to have our tin cup out every day. And the number of patients we can help is directly related to the amount of money that we have in our account, right?
So, in addition to that program, our Lazarex Care Program, what we are also doing is trying to fix this problem and do it in a sustainable way. And in order to do that, we actually have to shift the burden from the patient back into industry, right, and help industry understand why they should include these out-of-pocket expenses as part of the clinical trial protocol every time, right, so they can enroll trials on time, on budget, save R&D dollars, preserve patent years, right?
I mean, there are a lot of reasons why pharma would want to participate in a program like that, in addition to the fact that it’s the right thing to do, right? And then we get more drugs to market faster, and we provide a platform of equitable access for everyone. So, we are engaging pharma in discussions right now about funding this program, we call Lazarex our IMPACT Program, that’s being rolled out at comprehensive cancer centers across the country. And it stands for Improving Patient Access to Cancer Clinical Trials.
It has been received very well and I’m happy to say that Amgen actually stepped up and funded this, so we are rolling it out here in California, and we are hoping that we’ll have similar opportunities in a couple of other areas in the United States. So, they are interested, and they want to improve clinical trial enrollment retention, and especially minority participation.
Andrew: Right. Boy, that you. Again, I keep saying thank you for what you’re doing, but you’re a real leader in the field. I’m going back next month to the Biden Cancer Initiative Summit continued by Vice President, Biden, former Vice President Biden, and his wife who continue to do leadership in this. And there’ll be a lot of senior people there and I’m hoping we can talk. And I know this issue of how can we advance cancer care through research in partnership with patients is a big one. So, Dana, thank you for helping lead the way in getting this going. And thanks to Amgen just as an example.
Reina, so, we talked about the cultural differences of people being in trials. We talked about the pride people may have in asking for assistance, the fear people have maybe participating in trials. You still have a – not now. I mean, you’re doing so well and you’ve been through trials and it’s worked out well. But there must have been some bumps along the way. Were there any misgivings at different times? And if so, how did you overcome it?
Reina: Oh, yeah. Well, there were definitely misgivings, I am sure. The first trial was when I asked the doctor if there’s something going on at the NCI. And there was no misgivings about that because that was a very observational trial. The second trial was much more progressive and I felt kind of a little uncertain about it, and so I asked the researcher at this well-known institution if I should participate because the trial, I should back up a little bit, that was for either smoldering myeloma patients or active disease patients.
At the time I was smoldering, and most physicians didn’t believe that that was a good idea to treat smoldering and wait until it became active. So, I asked this one researcher and he said absolutely, not, do not participate in the trial. And then I called someone else also from a very respected institution where I had been, and he said well, if you join that trial you’ll be crossing the Rubicon, which I didn’t even know what the Rubicon was at the time. I had to go look it up.
But, basically, once you start treatment, you kind of go on that journey and there’s no way to step off. But then I thought about it, I thought about it, thought about it, and finally I decided to trust myself because I had been to the NCI. I felt very safe there. And I decided to move ahead with it.
So, yes, I had plenty of misgivings about that. The other trials, not really because that trial changed my life and it gave me a very reasonable complete response. And the other ones, like I said, they just kinda fell in with the collecting a good amount of stem cells for a transplant and so forth.
Andrew: I wanna talk about family issues. So, the decision to be in a trial affects the family, whether it’s somebody’s driving you to the doctor, somebody’s taking off work, their worry, how they feel about trials, their own view of it, family logistics, costs, et cetera. We’ve talked about that. So, you wrote this blog about people questioning your husband, I guess, was your wife gonna be in a trial? So, how did you overcome that, whether if not with your husband, just with your community that you weren’t like crazy?
Reina: Well, they already know I’m crazy, so that’s a total aside. But, really, trying to educate people about the misinformation about trials; say, look, I will never be a guinea pig because that’s not what trials are about. And it’s very well controlled and there’s a lot of data that follows you. The care that I got was excellent.
And I try to dispel, like I said, a lot of the myths; that you signed consent form, which clearly explains what the trial is about, what your commitment to it is, and you can also drop out for any reason. There was hope that you don’t because they would like to have some results that then will lead into future treatments for patients. But you can drop out, so, really, taking that opportunity to educate people about what a clinical trial is like and that there are no guinea pigs.
Andrew: I wanna just – oh, yes, please, Dana.
Dana: Yeah, if I could just offer something in that regard. For people who haven’t gone down this path, the journey with cancer, having a cancer diagnosis is not like other chronic diseases, right, like diabetes, for instance, that you can typically control with insulin or whatever, right? For a cancer patient who has failed standard of care, who’s gone through maybe second- or third-line treatment options, but still has progressive disease, that patient will die if they don’t do something, right?
And so, clinical trials offer tomorrow cures today in some instances, right, and we don’t always have positive results in clinical trials. But for a patient who’s at that crossroad where their doctor has delivered those words, “You need to get your affairs in order,” right, it’s not a matter of am I crazy if I participate in a clinical trial. What it is a matter of is do I wanna live? And if so, what clinical trial can I participate in? It’s a very different decision tree.
Andrew: Right. And I certainly say that all the time. I got a call, as I mentioned, from a friend in Miami. The mother has a very serious cancer. And I said part of the initial discussion, even the initial discussion, Dana, can also be are there clinical trials that we should consider along with standard therapy? So, certainly, if you’ve failed or they’ve failed you, the treatments no longer work, what is the 360 degree view? And if you don’t do it here, so they do it down the road, or do they do it across the country? And what are the issues for you participating?
So, a lot of thinking, but it’s gotta be part of the discussion. So, so sadly now, what are we seeing; 3 percent, 4 percent, 5 percent of adults participating in cancer clinical trials in the US. Not good at all. And are we hurting ourselves with the chance of future therapies that can be more effective, or even cures because some of these companies sometimes are venture-backed. They don’t have money forever, you know, and they’re trying to get to the goal line to go the FDA.
Look, here is another question we got in. Tamara, our producer, just sent in. She says well, what happens when you join a clinical trial and it doesn’t have a beneficial impact? So, Reina, they didn’t know that the trials would necessarily work out for you. So, what happens then? Do you go on another trial? What do you do?
Reina: Well, if it doesn’t and you don’t seem to be responding to the therapy on the trial, or you find it intolerable yourself, then they will always return you to your oncologist who you had been seeing previously. But, on the other hand, they may offer you another trial that’s available that you would be eligible for as well. So, I mean, I really try to stress to people that the researchers are looking out for you. They want the best income, in addition to accruing the data that they hope.
And I can tell you that when I was on a trial at the National Cancer Institute, when I had questions, especially about the trial with smoldering versus active disease for myeloma, they would spend a couple of hours for me, explained with me, can I say that, right? Yes, spent a couple hours with me explaining all of the aspects of the trial, so yeah.
Andrew: I wanna point up an example that some people have heard of a woman I’ve become friendly with in the myeloma community, Reina. Cherie Rineker. So, Cherie’s down in Houston, and she was dying of myeloma. And she’d been in trials and treatments. She was at MD Anderson. Bob Orlowski is one of the top doctors in the world, and her doctor. And she was in different trials and then things were not working.
And she was put in touch with another researcher doing this CAR T investigation for multiple myeloma, which is pretty new, pretty new. And they’re learning a lot. It’s not a slam dunk, but so far it’s worked for her. It saved her life. She went to Nashville, Tennessee from Houston where she lives, and maybe I’m not sure the financial issues, Dana, about going. But that’s where she’d been in successive trials. And some were not working or no longer were working. There was another approach.
I wanna ask about another concept I’ve heard called siteless trials. And I don’t know, Dana, you’re nodding your head. Maybe you are familiar with this. One is a siteless trial because we talked about these trials going on at these academic medical centers, but not much elsewhere.
Dana: So, I have tell you, I don’t have a lot of experience with siteless trials, but there is a lot of dialogue taking place around rather than having the patient go to the trial, bringing the trial to the patient, and I think that’s the impetus behind a siteless clinical trial.
I think cancer has some unique challenges, especially blood-based cancers in clinical trials, and the oversight of patients participating in those trials that make siteless trials a bit of a challenge. But I think the place to start is in other diseases, or perhaps where you have a cancer diagnosis that’s not a rare form of cancer, whatever that requires, a high degree of oversight.
But the whole goal in doing this is to understand how we can get more people into these trials and make it less obtrusive on their life, right, so that more patients would be inclined to participate, increase our enrollment retention, our minority participation, and, ultimately, reduce the burden on the patient to participate.
Andrew: Esther and I’ve given a lot of talks at different conferences, and we said you have to see patients who might be considering or are in a trial as investors. So, they’re gonna invest with their body, their time, sacrifices, and other things in their lives for the hope of being cured if they could, or doing better.
And there needs to be the communication, financial support, logistical support in really treating people with a lot of respect as a person. Reina, do you agree with that, that we have to get to that concept where we’re taken care of? And you felt that way, but we need to do it for more people and have more people feel confident that it’ll work out that way.
Reina: Oh, certainly. Certainly, I do. And the education is really essential. And after I was in the first trial, I talked to everybody who would listen to me. And even if they didn’t, I would talk anyway just to try to say this is a place where you can go where you will receive what is hopefully the newest and the best treatment that’s available. That you will be cared for as well as you can possibly be, and that everything is documented. You know all the options that you have staying on the trial, giving consent, making sure you have all the information that you need to feel comfortable.
And Dana’s organization, hopefully, helping people out financially and logistically. There are ways to get into trials that at times are very successful. For me personally, I don’t know that I would be alive now if I had been on that trial, and that’s really my claim to fame, what can I say?
Andrew: And, Reina, I would say the same thing. Had I not been in a Phase 2 trial for chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2000, I wouldn’t be around to have had retreatment last year, which has work quite well; 17-year remission. And I wouldn’t have been able to do this, and really have a purpose in life. So, I’m very grateful for being in the trial.
Dana, I can’t tell you – we were talking about gratitude, for you; came up in your family. You saw the gap for, not so much your family, but so many other families. The issues, financial issues, and you’ve been very philanthropic and, obviously, trying to have leadership in getting at some of these – we have a very imperfect system right now, so we have a long way to go. But for our viewers, if you’re living with cancer now, if your loved one is living with cancer, there are resources, people like Lazarex, people have been through it, like Reina.
We’re gonna give you this downloadable guide. And you’re gonna connect with these resources. Don’t… Put your pride away. Dana said it so well. There’s a very high likelihood we’re gonna be affected by cancer in our families, and there is help to navigate what’s kinda complicated right now, but is doable and can offer you the chance of doing better. Dana, did I say it right?
Dana: You did. You did. You did a great job, Andrew. Thanks.
Andrew: Okay. Well, thank you. And thanks to the Lazarex Cancer Foundation and, really, all you’re doing. And let’s hope that we can improve this process, increase participation, and have so many of these companies and the government that are trying to get scientific answers. We participate as respected patient investors. And we do better well. Reina, any final words from you with your 50th wedding anniversary coming up?
Reina: I’m very grateful. I’m very grateful to be here. I’m grateful for all the clinical trials, all the physicians who have taken care of me and who listened to all my concerns and fears. And I am super-duper grateful to my husband who has supported me, helped me, been there, been my caregiver, and washed the food for me when I had the transplant, and really, all the people who have been on the journey with me. So, if you are considering a clinical trial, if there is one that you might be eligible for, give it some thought. It’s a really important choice for you to make.
Andrew: Reina, thank you so much, all the best. Happy anniversary, early. Dana, best to you. Dana Dornsife, joining us from the Lazarex Cancer Foundation in the San Francisco Bay area. Dana, good health to your family, and thank you for all you do. Thanks for being with us, Dana.
Dana: Thank you.
Andrew: And, Reina, all the best, and thank you for those great words of wisdom. And we’ll meet in person sometime and I’ll give you a big hug, okay?
Reina: I hope so. I hope so. You take care of yourself, Andrew. Thank you so much.
Andrew: Thank you for joining us for this Patient Empowerment Network program Clinical Trials Mythbusters. We hope to do more. I wanna thank the companies that have helped provide funding for it; Abbvie Incorporated, Astellas, Celgene, and Novartis, for their support.
Thank you for joining us. I’m Andrew Schorr from Patient Power down near San Diego. Remember, knowledge can be the best medicine of all.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/Clinical-Trial-MythBusters.png600600Kara Rayburnhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngKara Rayburn2018-09-18 17:13:312020-01-08 12:30:24Clinical Trial MythBusters: Actionable Advice for Knocking Down Obstacles to Trial Participation
If each of us humans is a snowflake, unique in our genomic makeup, where’s my snowflake medicine? I asked that question from the platform at the ePharma Summit in New York in 2013, and have yet to get an answer. The challenge for the bioscience industry is, I believe, the classic randomized clinical trial. That design goes through four phases:
Phase 1: a small group of people are given the drug under study evaluate its safety, determine a safe dosage range, and identify side effects
Phase 2: a larger group is given the drug to evaluate its efficacy and safety in a larger population
Phase 3: large groups – plural – of people are given the drug to confirm its effectiveness, monitor side effects, compare it to other commonly-used treatments, and collect information that will allow the drug /treatment to be used safely
Phase 4: the drug is marketed while study continues to assess long-term effects and efficacy
Of course, before they even get to Phase 1, there have to be both the idea for the new treatment, and animal studies to determine what the substance or compound under study might do to a mouse or a monkey.
Science isn’t easy. The phrase “trial and error” came out of science labs, with many trials running up against the error wall by Phase 2. Since bioscience companies can sink about $1 billion-with-a-B into getting just one drug to market, it seems that the traditional clinical trial has turned into a pathway to NOT making scientific discoveries that can benefit humankind.
Then there’s the whole “who’s in charge here?” question. Clinical trials are now a global effort, with US and European pharma companies testing new treatments in Latin America, Russia, and China to gain traction in those emerging markets while simultaneously developing me-too drugs for their domestic markets. So, who’s in charge, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? The European Medicines Agency (EMEA)? A player to be named later? The answer to the question seems to be “all of the above,” which adds to the complexity of the clinical trial process.
As digital technology has made data easier to collect and share, it would seem that clinical trials would be a great place to start intersecting with the quantified-self movement. The shift to electronic health records, the widening adoption of all sorts of health tracking devices, and the rise of (relatively) cheap genomic sequencing should signal an ability to identify conditions, and populations, eager to participate in clinical investigations. But so far, it hasn’t.
What might challenge that stasis? In November 2013, three major pharma companies – Novartis, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly – announced via the White House’s website that they had joined together in a clinical open innovation effort. That page on the White House’s site is gone now – changes in Presidential administrations will do that – but here’s a direct quote from that announcement:
“In order to connect patients and researchers, Novartis, Pfizer and Eli Lilly and Company, are partnering in the U.S. to provide a new platform to improve access to information about clinical trials. The platform will enhance clinicaltrials.gov and will provide more detailed and patient-friendly information about the trials, including a machine readable ‘target health profile’ to improve the ability of healthcare software to match individual health profiles to applicable clinical trials. As part of the project, patients can search for trials using their own Blue Button data.”
Five years later, and we’re still stuck on the slow train when it comes to really reinventing the clinical trial.
I’m one of a growing group of people who think that the entire life-sciences process chain needs to be re-tooled for the 21st century. In my view, the best place to start that re-tool is at ground level, with the patients and clinicians who deal with challenging medical conditions daily. If a doctor has a number of patients who might benefit from some clinical study, why isn’t there an easy way to find a researcher looking into that condition? If a patient has an idea for a clinical investigation into his or her illness or condition, why can’t they find a researcher who’s interested in the same condition to team up and start a science project?
I can only hope that the regulatory agencies involved in life science oversight (hello, FDA!) can move beyond the aftermath of Thalidomide – for which epic disaster we’re still paying a price when it comes to the timeline for drug approval in the US – and toward a process of “all deliberate speed” that doesn’t forsake speed for deliberation. Both are necessary, neither should be more heavily weighted than the other.
We all can, and should, take part in scientific exploration into human life, and human health. Got an idea for a clinical trial? Share that idea in the patient communities you hang out in, and ask your tribe to help you bring that trial to life. To quote Arthur Ashe, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
Casey Quinlan covered her share of medical stories as a TV news field producer, and used healthcare as part of her observational comedy set as a standup comic. So when she got a breast cancer diagnosis five days before Christmas in 2007, she used her research, communication, and comedy skills to navigate treatment, and wrote “Cancer for Christmas: Making the Most of a Daunting Gift” about managing medical care, and the importance of health literate self-advocacy. In addition to her ongoing work as a journalist, she’s a popular speaker and thought leader on healthcare system transformation from the ground up.
Hearing your name and the word “cancer” in the same sentence is a world-shaking moment. After getting a cancer diagnosis, telling your family about it is another big step, one that can be fraught with as much emotion as hearing that diagnosis yourself.
Once the emotional dust has settled, talking with your family about treatment options, including clinical trials, can raise the emotional temperature again. If your family is like mine, everyone has an opinion, and is more than ready to share it. Even in families where everyone is calm about big issues like this – I question that those families exist, but I’ve heard they might – talking about clinical trials as a treatment option means being ready to field questions, and guide the conversation.
The American Cancer Society has a great set of resources for people who are assessing whether clinical trials are a good option for their treatment. I’ll use some of those as a framework for a discussion guide you can use to walk your family through your decision to explore clinical trials for your cancer:
Why do I want to participate in a clinical trial?
Your reasons can be anything from “I want to try cutting edge treatments” to “my cancer is advanced stage, and I want to throw everything but the kitchen sink at it.” The key here is to have an answer ready to this question when you discuss treatment options with your family.What are the risks?
What are the risks?
Here’s another question you’ll want to gather answers for, for yourself, before opening a conversation with your family about enrolling in a trial. Your oncology team can help you put together a risk profile for trials, and further help you target the right trials via molecular profiling of your cancer.
Will my insurance cover the trial?
Federal law requires that most insurers cover routine costs of cancer trials. However, like so much about US health insurance, the answer can still be “it depends.” There’s a great tip-sheet on the National Cancer Institute’s site that addresses this topic. You, and your family, and your oncology team, will be working together to make sure your costs are covered, either by your insurer or the trial sponsor.
What happens if I’m harmed by the trial – what treatment will I be entitled to?
Here’s another “it depends” situation. Addressing harm to trial participants is an ongoing ethics issue in the US. The key here is to review all trial enrollment documentation fully – with help from a medical ethicist or legal eagle who’s not involved with the trial, or your oncology team – and have any potential harm scenario fully spelled out, including who will address the remedy for harm, and how that remedy will be delivered.
Having solid family support is a key factor in managing cancer treatment, and in thriving as a cancer survivor. Getting your family involved in your care by talking through your options and decisions with them will give them a sense of involvement in your care, and its outcome. They can help you through the down days when side effects have you feeling punky, and celebrate the bright days with you when scans show progress against your cancer.
Curing cancer is a team sport. You, your family, and your oncologists are all on that team. Work together toward a win, which often includes unlocking the power of precision medicine via clinical trials – which can become a win for other cancer patients, too.
Casey Quinlan covered her share of medical stories as a TV news field producer, and used healthcare as part of her observational comedy set as a standup comic. So when she got a breast cancer diagnosis five days before Christmas in 2007, she used her research, communication, and comedy skills to navigate treatment, and wrote “Cancer for Christmas: Making the Most of a Daunting Gift” about managing medical care, and the importance of health literate self-advocacy. In addition to her ongoing work as a journalist, she’s a popular speaker and thought leader on healthcare system transformation from the ground up.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/CQ-Aug.png600600Casey Quinlanhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngCasey Quinlan2018-08-13 17:44:462019-09-02 12:27:33Talking To Your Family About Clinical Trial Decisions
Many cancer patients feel that the clinical trial process is in need of a serious makeover. One of them is Jim Omel. Jim, a retired oncologist living with multiple myeloma, turned patient advocate, makes it his business to understand myeloma from the inside out. He joins this program to share his experience in clinical trials and how he learned about his vulnerabilities as a cancer patient.
Also joining the discussion is, Dr. Michael Thompson, medical director for the Early Phase Cancer Research Program at the Aurora Research Institute and an active clinical researcher developing new treatments, particularly early phase (Phase I and II) molecular biomarker-driven clinical trials.
Join us for a meeting of the minds on debunking myths around clinical trials. How are patients protected within a trial? Will I as a patient be lost in the clinical trial system? Can I select my own arm in a trial? The questions are endless and, left unanswered, contribute to the barriers to trial enrollment.
Transcript:
Andrew Schorr:
Welcome to this Patient Empowerment Network program. I’m Andrew Schorr from Patient Power. I’m joining you from near San Diego, Carlsbad, California, and I’m so excited about this program, Does the Clinical Trial Process Need an Extreme Makeover? Having been in a clinical trial, and I’ll talk about my experience in a little while. I am a big fan, but I know that people have concerns, and I know that the percentage of cancer patients who are in clinical trials among adults is very low. How does that affect drug development and having the chance to get closer to cures for us?
I want to thank the financial sponsors for this program who provided assistance to the Patient Empowerment Network. They are Celgene Corporation, Astellas and Novartis. They have no editorial control, so what happens in the next hour is what we say, the questions you ask, what we hear from our experts who are joining us.
If you have a question, send it in to questions@patientpower.info. Again, if you have a question, send it in to questions@patientpower.info, and our wonderful producer Tamara will take a look at it, forward it to me, and as we can over the next hour we’ll be discussing questions you have already sent in. And we’ll have a very inspiring, I think, and provocative dialogue between our experts.
So let’s meet them. I want to take you to Grand Island, Nebraska, where my dear friend Jim Omel is there. He’s a retired now family practice physician. And, Jim, for years you’ve been a myeloma patient. When were you diagnosed with myeloma, and what’s happened along the way? You’re taking regular treatment now, I think, some treatment for the bone complications. How are you doing, and when were you diagnosed?
Jim Omel:
Andrew, I was diagnosed in 1997. It started off with a plasma cytoma at T10. I broke my back, I underwent a stem cell transplant in 2000 and had six years of remission. It came back in 2006, and I had radiation and lenalidomide (Revlimid), and it went away a while. Came back again in 2010, and I had radiation, bortezomib (Velcade), Revlimid, dex, and it went into remission. And since then, Andrew, I’ve been so fortunate that all I’ve been taking is bone-protective bisphosphonates.
Andrew Schorr:
Oh, good for you. Now, you were in a trial, but you decided not to continue, but yet you’re a believer in trials.
Jim Omel:
Oh, absolutely. Without trials our treatment wouldn’t change. When I had a full evaluation at Arkansas they suggested that I join their trial, and I did, and at the end of that trial was a tandem transplant. And I got to thinking and reading, and I didn’t really want to get that extent of treatment. I had a single transplant, and I dropped out of the trial. And that’s one of the things that I would certainly tell our listeners, that they can stop a trial at any time. They’re not bound to it. Ever since then, Andrew, I’ve had the good fortune of having fairly responsive myeloma, and when I had my treatments they responded to standard therapy. I certainly would have rejoined another trial if necessary, but I was fortunate that it responded the way it did.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. And before we meet our next guest, I just wanted you to list some of the committees you’re on, because you’re very active locally and nationally on behalf of patients. So what are some of those activities you’re doing?
Jim Omel:
Well, I’ve been doing this since about 2000, so that involves a lot of activity. Peer review with the NCI was one of my main ways to get started.
Andrew Schorr:
National Cancer Institute.
Jim Omel:
Yes, and I progressed on to the Board of Scientific Advisors, which was a really good, important work with the director of the NCI. I’ve been an FDA patient representative for many years and was on the advisory board that brought Kyprolis or carfilzomib to us. I spend a lot of time each month for sure with the Alliance Cooperative Group working with Paul Richardson as we bring you new trials to patients. I’ve been with CINBR, Center for National Bone Marrow Transplant research for several years, several advisory boards. I’m on two pharma accompany advisory boards as they seek patient input.
Andrew Schorr:
Wow. All right. Well, the point of this, what I wanted our viewers to get, is that Jim is—trained as a physician, worked many years as a family physician, became a patient, eventually had to retire. He’s been through a lot of treatment and is very much an advocate for all of us, particularly in this process of trials. So we’re going to talk about the unvarnished truth about trials and see how we can make it better. Okay.
Let’s skip over to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we’re joined by Dr. Mike Thomson, who is very involved in research, and Mike has been very involved in all sorts of programs related to education. So, Mike, first of all, welcome to the program, and tell us a little bit about your involvement both locally in research and in education of other physicians nationwide and worldwide.
Dr. Thompson:
Sure. So not as impressive as Jim, but he’s one of my heroes who has really dedicated himself to improving the clinical trials process. I have an MD, PhD. My PhD is in pharmacology, and I was interested in pharmacogenetics and how individuals vary in their response to drugs, especially cancer drugs. I did my fellowship at MD Anderson and worked with a lot of myeloma doctors there and have worked in the community setting seven years in one place and about five years now where I’m located at and Aurora Healthcare in Milwaukee. I have been on the NCI Myeloma Steering Committee. I’m currently on the NCI lymphoma steering committee. I helped organize the ASCO 2016 meeting. I was the Chair of Education. As of June, I’m one of the editors for cancer.net around myeloma, so taking over from Paul Richardson who did that. So I’ll have about three years doing that and probably asking people like Jim for help to provide educational materials for people. And in the world of myeloma, I’ve created the MMSM or Multiple Myeloma Social Media hashtag to have Twitter chats, which I know some people don’t think are the optimal form of communication, but it is a way to get information out from experts and some opportunity for patients to ask questions. So I’ve been highly involved in social media, highly involved in the NCI and NCORP for increasing access to clinical trials in the community. And right now I am in the middle of an NCI designated clinical trial called EAA172 for multiple myeloma, which has gone through ECOG Executive Committee, the NCI Myeloma Steering Committee, and now we’re discussing with the companies and with Ctap how to bring that forward. And I think that’s—one of the things is how much effort it takes to bring some of these trials from concept to activation.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Now, we’ve mentioned this more rare cancer, multiple myeloma, not rare if you have it, but Jim has it, Mike specializes in it a lot. But what we’re talking about applies to the clinical trial process about broadly. So we may have people with us living with lung cancer and hoping to live longer and better, prostate cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, like me, are also myelofibrosis. I’m a two-fer, if you will. There may be many different cancers among our audience, and the process applies to all. So we’re going to talk about that. So whatever it is, ask your questions, questions@patientpower.info. I’m just going to share a little personal story for a second, because I’m very passionate about it, and I wanted to mention it. And this is part of our Clinical Trials MythBusters series, and we have previous programs on Patient Power with lung cancer experts, experts in other conditions about the clinical trial process, so look that up on patientpower.info. There will be a replay of today’s program and also a downloadable guide with highlights that you can share, talk about it with your doctor, with other patients, with people you know and for your review. Okay.
So now my own story. I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common adult leukemia, in 1996—terrified, had no idea what it was. Didn’t know anything about what a trial was, didn’t know what the treatments were. Quite frankly, thought I’d be dead like within a week. I didn’t know. And so you start getting educated, and eventually that led to me connecting with academic medicine specialists and ultimately suggestion at the appropriate time of being in a Phase II clinical trial. I didn’t know what the phases were, we may talk about that along the way, and it was 2,000 miles from my house. So I traveled a number of times to be in that trial, and I had my local oncologist collaborating on that. And the end result was I had a 17-year remission. I had treatment again for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. It wasn’t until last year, 17 years. And I got the combination of medicines 10 years before that combination was approved. So I’m a believer.
The second thing I’d say about trials was I was in a second trial along the way, and I had deep vein thrombosis, blockages in the veins in my legs, for a blood thinner trial. And by being observed in that trial, that led to them discovering a second cancer which was at work related to those clots, myelofibrosis, and I was observed, so I liked the attention. It had nothing to do with what they were testing. It had to do with the observation you get. So, again, I love the attention of being in a trial. It may give you access to tomorrow’s medicine today, but there are things that may be broken. So, Jim, let’s start with that. Jim, what has been some of the frustration points for you the way the process has been today?
Jim Omel:
Well, I think one of the main things, Andrew, is that clinical trials tend to be designed to answer scientific questions. I think what they should do is be patient friendly. I think they should be designed to help patients. If you ask any researcher, what is the purpose of the scientific trial, clinical trial, they will say, to answer a question. If you ask a patient, they’ll think the purpose of the trial is to help patients. The—it may seem like a minor point, but it’s not. Patients need to be the center of them. We need to help patients understand what their contribution is to a trial. For instance, hardly ever does a patient hear how their outcome, what they did during a trial improved the final outcome of a trial. The patient needs to be centered. If we get the trial to a point where some of the questions are pretty obviously answered, rather than continuing to recruit patients just to be statistically valid, I think trials should close sooner. I think they should be more focused on getting patient care without necessarily the scientific question. I’m not a radical. I’m certainly a fan of trials. We wouldn’t be where we’re at without trials, but I think they should just become more patient-centered and patient-friendly.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Now, Mike, Dr. Thomson, so we know we can’t have new drugs approved by the FDA unless there are trials, Phase I, Phase II for sure, and often, typically, Phase III and sometimes even monitoring after a drug has been approved. I think you call those Phase IV trials. But from where you sit having been around this a long time what are some of your frustrations? What would you like to see be improved?
Dr. Thompson:
I agree a lot with Jim. I think another word to put on it is pragmatic trials. So I’ve been on a number of advisory committees, NCI investigator-initiated studies and pharma-directed studies. And when you have an advisory group with a bunch of academics they often think about the theories, and they think about what would be interesting to know. And increasingly both the NCI and others are getting not only patients but community physicians who will say I don’t really care about this question here. And we don’t think that it will fly and won’t accrue, and we know a lot of trials don’t complete accrual, so therefore patients are wasted, if you will, because we won’t have the information, we won’t be able to answer questions. So I agree. There are so many things get to involved it’s hard to break them all down, but part of the issue is answering a clinically meaningful question. I think the meaning should be patient-centered. Within those questions you can ask scientific questions that are imbedded in what are sometimes called secondary imports or co-relative studies. But I just last week was talking to some pharmaceutical leaders, and I said, you have to design a trial to answer a question people care about, and that’s patients and physicians. Because sometimes the trials are designed to get FDA approval, and they’re comparator arm if it’s a randomized study, is an arm that we don’t think is the current standard of care, and we have to do them in countries where they don’t have as many therapies and they don’t have as much access, so they’ll get them done. But then when they’re approved in the U.S. we don’t know what to do with the trial, because it’s not a question we’re asking. So that’s important. And I think if more studies are done not to get FDA approval but to go on pathways and to ask, what are the clinical branch points for decision-making, I think that’s when you’ll start getting good trials.
There are a number of other issues around the pragmatics. So there’s this NCI Match study, tons of people screened, very few people on the matched drugs, and they switched over to a strategy more like an ASCO TAPUR, where they waited for people that already had testing and then the people that had already kind of pre-screened couldn’t get evaluated for the study. And many, many more people went on study. The imaging and other things in the middle were not as rigorous as a usual clinical trial. It rolled quickly, and I think the point is you’re looking for big end points. Where you have to sort of go back to the classical, randomized, Phase III large study is when you’re trying to make incremental improvements, so, for instance, breast cancer where the cure rate or progression-free survival rate may be in the 90-something percentile rate, or even CML or other things where we’re doing so well you’d need a lot of patients and probably a standard design. But in many other areas you can do a variety of different techniques—Bayesian analysis, continuous reassessment models.
And one thing Jim mentioned was stopping for futility or if there’s an obvious benefit, and that is done but probably not as often as it should be. And the designs using what are called interim analyses or futility analysis with data safety monitoring boards or DSMBs, probably could be more robust. There could be more of them. I think people are afraid to do them, because they do slow the trial down, they slow accrual, and that has to do with stuff both within the trial as well as extrinsic to it. So there are a number of barriers and issues, but I think Jim’s pinpointed them as well.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. Well, folks, you can tell that Dr. Thomson is a scientist. We’re going to unpack this and get down to the nitty-gritty. So, okay. So, Jim, so first of all, we mentioned this term “randomization.” So people wonder in cancer am I going to get the good stuff? I know that I’m sick, maybe like in your area, multiple myeloma, there have been lots of new medicines, but in some other areas not, like pancreatic cancer, for example.
So, say, I understand the standard therapy, and you’re testing it maybe against that, but I want to get the good stuff, because I’m really hopeful. I want to be a believer. So could you just describe where we are with randomization, because that’s a concern people have?
Dr. Thompson:
Absolutely, Andrew, and thanks for asking that question. That’s a real red, red hot button item for me. I maintain that if the patient has gone through the effort of studying their cancer, studying the possible treatments, and they’ve learned of a trial that’s opened that they would qualify for, they’re excited, they go talk to the principal investigator, and they say I want to be in this trial. And the PI turns to them and they say, well, we’ll flip a coin. You may get the medicine we’re going to be using, or you may get standard therapy. Just imagine how disappointing that would be. And when it comes to randomization, Andrew, there’s many, there are many trials that absolutely lack equipoise. And I’m afraid that scientists often use equipoise.
Andrew Schorr:
Now, tell us what that means. You’ve got to define that for us.
Jim Omel:
Equipoise basically means equal, equal balance within the arms. In other words, technically, officially the principal investigator doesn’t know which arm is best. And yet look at it from the patient’s standpoint. Let me give you an example. There was a trial in which patients had the choice of three oral drugs in one arm versus a stem cell transplant in another arm. Now, think about that. Think of the insurance ramifications. Think of the fact that it takes almost a year to really totally recover from a stem cell transplant, versus taking three oral drugs. How can anyone say that there’s equipoise in a trial like that? So how can you pattern your life with the flip of the coin or a computer randomizing you into one of those arms?
Andrew Schorr:
Wow. That’s, that’s an important issue. Another one is, Mike, you know, people are—one of the ladies wrote in on Facebook I posted about this program, and she said, well, the trials are not really accessible to me because I live in a rural area, and they’re only in the big cities. You’re in one, Milwaukee. But Jim’s in Grand Island, Nebraska, and some people if you set requirements for the trial, well, you’ve got to come see me, you’ve got to come to the clinic for a variety of tests with some frequency and somebody has to drive four or five hours and take off work and get babysitters and all that, it just makes it impractical. Where are we with more trials being available or having an aspect of it, like testing, closer to home?
Dr. Thompson:
So I work at a community setting. I’m at our kind of flagship hospital but we cover most of the population centers of Wisconsin, so I think we cover about 70 or 80 percent of the population. So that’s a huge issue for our site is that we—when I talk to sponsors including as recently as last week I say if we can’t do it at all our sites I’m not really interested in doing your trial.
There are exceptions of course. We’re doing a surgical trial or a radiation trial that has to be at one site or sometimes a Phase I trial with just a lot of blood monitoring, very intensive, they can only be done at a few sites. But in general I completely agree that we should try to have the drugs available to people in the community they live in, because that’s where their social networks are, right? So that’s where their family is. They can stay at home. They don’t have to just go into a hotel. They don’t have to pay for travel, and I think it’s better for everyone. And for companies, I’ve been trying to tell them that it’s more generalizable to the reality of where cancer patients are. So
85 percent of cancer patients are in the community setting and are treated there, and drugs should be accessible to them there. So, you know, both the using the CCOP mechanism or NCCCP, and now we have the NCI Community and College Research Program or NCORP. The whole idea is to increase that access to community sites. So this has been going on a long time. I think there were budget cuts, and so the U.S. and the way we’ve established our cancer budgets has been to decrease access at least NCI trials and usually need some of those NCI trials to support the research infrastructure to do other studies. So I think part of that, you know, a lot of these things you follow the money. And if there was more money for community research sites, you could hire more research staff to get these things done.
But I think we need to get them done in the community, because we know if you do early phase studies and they look promising in highly selective patients, then when you expand them and put them in the community you go from efficacy to effectiveness, and the effectiveness isn’t there because the patients are different. So there are all these things with real-world data and comparative effectiveness research at ASCO’s cancer link trying to get at some of that not on study to just try to get the data.
But we need to have access to people, and the way to make drugs cheaper, make them develop faster and answer more questions, both scientific and patient-oriented, is to get more people on trial. There’s a big example for immunotherapy drugs where there are so many immunotherapy drugs and trials there are not enough patients to get it done. So we’re going to enrolling in trials which don’t complete, or we’re not going to be able to answer these questions, so it’s going to stall and move it out the process of moving faster. In myeloma, we move very fast, but we need to do this in other areas too.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. So let’s talk about that. So, Jim, you know, the president had a big kick-off, HHS Secretary Azar I think just yesterday as we do this program, was before Congress and part of it was the discussion of can we lower the cost of drugs ultimately? And one aspect of it is can we speed drug development. So instead of all these trials languishing at the cost of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, how do we speed it up?
So one is participation, certainly, but can the process be simplified as well, Jim? What work is going on there, so we can try to get these answers and get to the FDA and present the data quicker, and hopefully there’s been lower cost in getting to that point?
Jim Omel:
Well, as we’re learning more and more about each individual patient, personalized medicine and targeted therapy, we certainly should start relying more on biomarkers. Biomarkers can be a way to select patients that would particularly fit a given treatment.
We need to lower costs. We need to make trials slicker and faster. Single-arm trials are those in which a patient just get—all the patients get the therapy. They all get the same treatment. And FDA has actually approved drugs based on single-arm trials, a much faster and efficient way to get an answer.
The problem is that the costs are going to be there. When I think about Mike and all the work that he does in developing his venetoclax (Venclexta) trial that he mentioned, Mike has put in months or years, and it’s all above and beyond his normal time. I mean his day job is to take care of patients, so all of the work that he does to develop a trial is just remarkable in the extra hours it takes and the consistency that Mike gives to doing his work. We need to make the trials more efficient.
We need to use biomarkers. We need to make them shorter. We need biostatisticians to come up with ways to give us an answer without having to approve so many hundreds or thousands of patients to all these potential new treatments.
Andrew Schorr:
So, Mike, let’s talk about that. And, Mike, first of all, I want to thank you for your—well, both of you, but, Mike, certainly in the clinic, thanks for your devotion to this.
But continuing on that, so this was brought up by Jim, biomarkers, and I know in some of the blood cancers now we’re talking about more and more minimal residual disease testing, and we’re doing genomic testing to see what genes have gone awry, what’s our version of lung cancer or a breast cancer or a myelofibrosis or whatever it is.
And then do we qualify for a trial? What’s our specific situation? Do you feel that that sort of precision medicine testing and analysis can help refine this, so we know which trial is right for which person at which time and also some analysis along the way of how is it going?
Dr. Thompson:
Yeah, so at my site I’m the director for precision medicine, and I gave a talk at ASCO on precision medicine and barriers in the community setting, so I’m very passionate about that. And I think that is one of the ways you can try to get things done with smaller numbers of patients and things done faster. And part of this is alignment, right? So there’s different perspectives, a patient perspective, a payer perspective, a pharma sponsor perspective, the physician. There’s all these different perspectives, and I think it’s trying to get them all aligned and trying to get things done faster.
So, you know, there are some areas where we don’t know enough, and we can’t use biomarkers. But there are other areas where we have a biomarker, and there’s feasibility, and we can test that quickly. And if we are looking for a large effect size—here I am in jargon mode—but if you’re looking for a big, big hit, a home run, is to look for an alteration that is very specific and we think is—a drug can target. So-called targeted therapy—it’s a little bit of a misnomer.
So—and lung cancer has been one of the hottest places for this. So there’s ALK inhibitors, ROS1 inhibitors, EGFR inhibitors, and now BRAF inhibitors, HER2 targets. So lung cancer has exploded with precision medicine therapy, and the same with melanoma and BRAF. So, you know, I think even skeptics will say you don’t really need statistics if the prior therapies, nothing worked, and you give something, and 80 percent of people respond.
There are issues with precision medicines, but the main thing is not response rate but durability. And I think that’s going to be the next iteration of the NCI Match study, which is a large precision medicine study, is stop doing just these small groups of people who are showing activity, but then they relapse quickly. And I think it’s going to look at systems analysis, and how do we overcome resistance.
But one way to get at this and another different take on it is inclusion and exclusion criteria. So this has to do with access and individualizing and being patient-centric. Many of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, when somebody says, oh, I have lung cancer, oh, here’s a lung cancer trial, and they say, oh, you can’t go on the trial. And much of that is because there’s language that’s been cut and pasted from a previous trial which is not really pertinent.
So if the new drug is metabolized by the kidney, you don’t necessarily need to look at the liver studies. And we did a small study or I was aware of a small study done by Kaiser where if we improve the inclusion-exclusion criteria, accrual rate can go up 30 percent—so no cost to that.
Andrew Schorr:
Wow.
Dr. Thompson:
And Ed Kim led a publication about six journal articles in JCO about different aspects of inclusion-exclusion criteria including function, HIV status, age, etc.
Andrew Schorr:
Well, yeah. We had Ed Kim on the program just a week ago, as a matter of fact.
So, Jim, inclusion, exclusion, so first of all, we’re in this age where electronic medical records, it would seem that at your fingertips there could be some analysis of your record and some matching or offering of trials that could come out of an analysis of your results, genomic results. Do you have ALK or ROS or whatever, if it’s lung cancer, whatever it may be maybe JAK2 positive in myelofibrosis, what is various status for us?
And also broader inclusion criteria, and Mike was getting at that, saying some was just—excluding was just cut and pasted. And a lot of us patients would feel, well, that’s just unfair. So what’s your comment on all that, about inclusion and exclusion and analysis so we can be matched with trials more easily, can be offered to us?
Jim Omel:
Inclusion and exclusion criteria are really important parts of trials. They’re what get people into trials, they’re what keep people from being in trials. And, unfortunately, Andrew, many times the criteria are very defined, very narrowed, and drug companies especially want to do it this way to get the best effective appearance of their drug. They want to get approval. And yet in the real world, in fact most times, patients who would not even need inclusion criteria are the very patients that are going to be taking these drugs.
And Mike’s right. There’s too much cut and paste. If a trial takes a thousand patients to write a proposal or protocol, too many times researchers will just take the exclusion criteria that might have been from a previous trial and, like Mike said, cut and paste it when perhaps it’s not even necessary to have creatinine values or kidney values measured so precisely on this particular drug compared to the other one.
So those are the criteria that let people in or keep people out of trials, and they absolutely need to be widened. To make a drug more applicable to the general population we need to reflect the general population more in trials.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. Right. It’s sort of a Catch-22. So if somebody is at a drug company and they’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars maybe to develop a drug, and then that trial is languishing or taking longer to get there, somebody ought to go back and say, well, can I loosen up this criteria, get the big answer and do benefit to patients who may be very willing to be into a trial that doesn’t have all of these requirements that are not really necessary? And we get the answer and get it quicker, and help people along the way. I mean, it’s pretty obvious to me, and I hope they’re watching, folks.
So, Mike, here’s a question for you, though, and you work with people in the community setting. So we have patients who have written in and said, you know what, where I go to the cancer clinic they never mentioned trials to me, and Jim alluded to the extra time it may take for physicians and their teams is when there are trials. You have just treating people with current therapies, and then you’ve got research layered on top of that. It’s very time consuming.
But what about just awareness at the community level? What can we do about that so that wherever I go into a clinic they have a clear picture of what I’m dealing with, and if there is important research going on that relates to me I hear about it? Now, maybe they say, you’ve got to go to a university center, you’ve got to go to Milwaukee, wherever you have to go, but there’s that discussion.
Dr. Thompson:
Yeah, so with all of these, you know this has been analyzed in multiple different papers. We were on one looking at a trial log, trying to look at some of these issues, and what seems to be clear is when people are offered trials they tend to go on them at about the same rate, and that has to do—seems to be somewhat independent of socioeconomic status, race, etc., or geographic area.
So one of my colleagues, Dr. Verani, told us about—about this, about rural settings how do you get people on trial. So there are different barriers. So one is the trial, and like Jim said, if you can only do some therapy that you have to come in quite a bit for that limits the geographic area you can accrue to for most people.
There are site issues where if you don’t have enough research staff to be there enough the doctor doesn’t feel supported to spend time on it. There are physician issues where they may not care about trials, or they have too much people scheduled in clinic, they’re an hour behind, and they can’t stop to spend time on it.
Also in the community setting you may be seeing every type of cancer, and you can’t remember everything, versus at many academic settings you may only see one or a cluster of types of cancer. So if you’re seeing lung cancer all day and you have 10 trials open, you probably know those trials very well for lung cancer, because you don’t care about the CLL or myeloma trials, you only care about lung.
And then there are patient factors. So patients that are in rural Wisconsin may have different characteristics, and the reason they’re in rural areas, you know, the motivations is about, you know, going in for things and stuff like that may be different than people who have the capabilities to fly to Boston or Houston or New York, and they can do that. So all of those areas are important.
Now, one potential way to help mitigate some of those things is we have got a clinical decisions support tool, which is an IT product, which our physicians have to enter in what they’re going to do with the patient. So it could be observe, no treatment, hospice or various therapies. And when they put in the cancer and the stage it pops up with the clinical trials, the first thing that pops up. And so the physician doesn’t have to do the trial, but they have to say why they’re not doing it. And so we can track over time. It doesn’t necessarily help that individual patient, but that doctor has been aware of the trial, and we kind of get an idea of why people are not going on studies, and so that’s one way to do it.
Something we just did the last week is we had a different IT product where the NCI-matched precision study opened up five new arms with different targets for different drugs. So we looked back at the number of patients that had those targets identified within our entire system, and then we screened those to see how many people were still alive, and were their organ functions still good enough to go on these trials because of the inclusion-exclusion criteria, and we found several. So we’re now able to contact the physicians and the research staff to go back for these patients that had screened for molecular testing and now they have new options.
So I think there are IT issues that you can do systemically to try to take some of those barriers away, and then each of those points does have barriers which probably have different solutions and different ways of tackling. But one reason, you know, the accrual rate hasn’t gone up a lot is it’s not easy. It’s a complex problem, so there’s not going to be one single thing you do. There’s going to be many different ways to try to improve things, including patient education.
Andrew Schorr:
Yes, well, okay. To let’s flip that over. Jim, you and I are patients. So what do we want to say, and from your perspective?
So back at the clinic and from group has, so Mike is working on IT to identify trials and have it pop up on the screen for the doctor. Okay. Great. But we’re the ones living with the condition. What can we do so that promising research that we may learn about is available to us? We can see whether it matches up with us. Maybe we have to go down the road. Maybe we have to have a discussion with our doctor to even encourage them to have you us be in a trial. How do we make it happen, okay?
Jim Omel:
Well, of course, we all need to educate ourselves about our cancer. When I was in medicine school I had heard about myeloma, but I certainly wasn’t any expert in it. I had two patients in my practice that had myeloma. I knew sort of how to take care of them. But since I developed my myeloma, I have become my own expert. And as I lead my support group, Andrew, I make them experts. I teach this cancer to them so that they can make educated decisions.
Patients are very likely to go on the Internet, watching Patient Power. In my particular cancer, they’re going to go to the IMF and MMRF to look at myeloma trials and see what’s available. And they will take that information to their doctors, many times making their doctor aware of trials that perhaps they aren’t each advocating or aware of.
So, Mike’s right. There are many factors that keep patients from trials, but one of the things that patients really do themselves is educate themselves and perhaps even to the extent of bringing or educating their doctor about what can be available for their treatment.
Andrew Schorr:
Mike, I want to ask you about cost. So you mentioned different inclusion, exclusion, or what’s your liver function or this or that. So there is a problem where maybe certain drugs or certain aspects of a trial are covered, but then your insurance company, you know, that you have or Medicare or whatever, they say, oh, no, we don’t pay for that, but yet it’s part of the trial or it goes along.
So people have a concern about cost. I want to ask you about two aspects of cost related to testing sometimes. And then also are there programs that can assist with the logistical costs for patients as well?
Dr. Thompson:
So when I trained at Mayo Clinic and MD Anderson, and when I got—first went into practice I prided myself in not caring about cost. And then I realized you have to think about these things because you can bank—you know, we bankrupt, about 40 percent of people with cancer get bankrupted. So these are huge issues for people who want to keep their houses, that want to hand something down to their kids, and cost is huge, right? So that can either be throughout the whole course of standard treatment, or it can be trying to meet the cost of going places, trying to find clinical trials.
So the Affordable Care Act and various other national and state legislative initiatives have tried to make insurance companies pay for the standard costs in clinical trials. There are some carve-outs for smaller companies and things like that, and so this is, you know, not perfect, but in general insurance companies should pay for the standard cost of clinical trials. They should pay for standard imaging stuff too, and they try to get out of that. So it’s not a perfect world, but that should be covered. And any research-associated costs should be covered by the company. Even in some NCI trials some people disagree with what should be covered and isn’t, and it’s complicated. But in general, a patient, the research cost should be covered.
Now, that does not include travel, lodging and a lot of incidentals. So there are a variety of foundations, that could be The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, that could be other organizations which could help with that. Individual hospitals or health systems might have ways of approaching that. And sometimes there are things you can do within the various companies. So there’s a new target called Entrek, and the company Loxo, I’ve heard will fly people who wherever there’s a site and pay for them to go on the study, which I think is amazing. That’s not true for every company and every drug being developed. But that’s one way to do it.
One of the issues that comes up with IRBs if you’re giving people money, are you coercing them? And, you know, if you’re just recovering the cost to travel, I don’t think you are, right? But those are one of the things that come up. But certainly there are lots of disparities. And just like in different countries, they don’t have access to the drugs we have as standard drugs here, and not all of these disparities are going to be fixed because we have—outside of cancer we have lots of disparities in the United States, but cost is a big issue.
And then value, which we’ve been increasingly talking about in the oncology community, which is utility over cost. And that’s more for once we’ve done the trial figuring out even if shows like it works, how do we figure out how to use it based on those characteristics?
Andrew Schorr:
Thanks. And also I wanted to mention that Mike Snyder is sending that question, answering why it cost so much. I hope that answers it.
We have—you know, some people wrote in as we were preparing for this program and they were bitter because they thought they had a spouse, let’s say, that had died in a clinical trial. And that relates to a couple of things. One is transparency. Is the data from a trial and any dangers that show up, is that reported and analyzed in public, Jim? And also what are the risks being in a trial, and what is the monitoring to try to have trials be at safe as possible. So, Jim, maybe you could talk about that from a patient perspective.
I want to make sure I know what I’m getting, I know what the risks are, and if any have come up along the way I want it to be reported, and I want to know that there’s a team looking out for me.
Jim Omel:
You have every right to expect that, Andrew. If you’re in a trial you have the right to get that knowledge if there’s new things that come up that we’ve learned about. And part of every trial as it’s being written, there has to be a data safety monitoring board. These are the experts who will do what you’ve asked be done. They will monitor the trial as it goes along. They will look for any safety issues. If there are patients who are developing liver toxicities, they will find this. They will point this out and perhaps see if the trial needs to continue or if something needs to be revised.
The presence of institutional review boards review whether trials should go forward or not. Patients who are in trials actually get very, very good medical care and medical coverage. In fact, I would maintain, Andrew, that they get better care than just standard care. They have experts that are watching them even more carefully than would be in a general routine care setting because they’re looking for these concerns and problems.
The person who mentioned the bad outcome, we can’t ever say that every trial is going to be perfect. There are going to be concerns. That’s why trials are done. But they’re relatively rare, and we do have boards and review organizations during the trial, not afterwards, but during the trial to be looking out for your benefit, Andrew, so that you’re not hurt by the trial.
Andrew Schorr:
All right. But let’s say this—and, Mike, for you. So, first of all, admittedly a lot of these trial start, and people are sick people, and they’re feeling maybe the trial is their last hope. We had a friend, Lisa Minkove, who died in the CAR-T trial for CLL not long ago. She had been very sick with CLL, so we’d hoped that it would work. It didn’t work for her, whether CLL won. And we know other people whereas the learning is going on about often powerful new medicines they didn’t benefit. Or in one case, there was a drug, venetoclax we know about, there were some deaths early on when the drug was far more powerful than was originally understood. So what do we do? I mean that’s the real world I guess of scientific study, but that’s a concern, you know, Mike, of people saying, oh, my God, I’m worried about being a guinea pig the unknowns on the subject of dangers.
Dr. Thompson:
So there are a couple of things. So whenever people say—it doesn’t come up as much recently about being a guinea pig, I say, well, guinea pigs don’t have choices, so. And so like Jim has said you can drop off a trial if you want to drop off it. But—so I think for adverse events and things that can happen, one reason to randomize people is that you do understand then if you treat someone with one thing and then another and the death rate the same in both, the drug is not causing it. That’s just the disease. And a couple years ago, there was a presentation from the group at Dana-Farber on the precision medicine program, and the issue was they were taking so long to get people evaluated that their performance status or how well they felt was good, and by the time they got through the evaluation many of them had died. Because the disease, you know, when you get to fifth, sixth, seventh-line therapy it can often progress very rapidly.
And so I think that’s one of the issues, that people can feel the drug did it, and it’s hard to know. And we get these—doctors get these things called adverse events reporting forms, and we have to try to come up with is this probably related, possibly related, and we also get these forms that say you have a patient on the study. The study is open in three countries, thousands of people on it. One person died of a heart attack, and you have no idea as the physician, well, is that the same rate as—you know they’re 70 years old. Is that the same rate as this other 70-year-old. So you need the enumerator and the denominator, and that’s what the DSMB or the Data Safety Monitoring Board is supposed to do, which is look at the data and say, is this beyond what we would expect? And they can stop the trial. They can do expanded cohorts. They can do things to try and figure that out. Now, we know from like even car companies lying about their exhaust systems that if the Data Safety Monitoring Board gets false data, well, you can’t fix that. But that’s pretty nefarious. Like that I think is not something that’s commonly happening and would be a very serious thing to happen.
Now, one thing for transparency is that almost all studies I’m aware of get registered on clinicaltrials.gov or maybe some other sites but usually that site, and they’re supposed to report out the outcomes. It’s not also a perfect process, but you should be able to see how long the study has been open, are there any complications related to it and those types of things. So this whole process is not perfect, but I would say in general the people at the companies are trying to develop something they think is going to work. They’re trying to do it safely, both to help develop their drug well as well as to avoid a bunch of regulatory issues, and the people on the Data Safety Monitoring Board are trying to do their best to answer these questions. But the smaller the number of patients which increasingly will take the trials we are doing and almost are aiming for, it’s harder to be definitive about when these things happen and what caused it.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. Right. It’s imperfect, as we said. So, Jim, Mike Thompson mentioned earlier, gave lung cancer as an example and, of course, across immunotherapy, there are so many companies endeavoring to move this research along. So let’s say you had lung cancer or one of these others where this is big, although it’s going on in the hematology area too, so a patient says, oh, my god, there are all these trials, and I might qualify for one, two, three, four. How do I prioritize? What do I bet on? And maybe my own doctor is doing more than one. So what do you say to patients if they become receptive to being in a trial and there’s more than one trial that they qualify for?
Jim Omel:
That’s a very good question, and it’s a nice kind of problem to have, to have choices of trials. I think, Andrew, the best answer is the patient needs to look at what they are looking for. Are they looking for longevity? Are they looking for something that’s going to expend their life? Are they looking for a trial that maybe will greatly improve their quality of life? Perhaps they’re looking for a trial that gives them one pill per week versus two injections a week. So there are certainly effectiveness end points. There are different things that patients find of value.
But to answer your question it really comes down to each patient needs to ask themselves, what is it I’m looking for in a trial? Do I want something that makes my burden lighter? Do I want something that’s going to extend my life? How much am I willing it accept as far as potential problems versus the standard of care that I know what the problems exist with if I don’t go on a trial?
Andrew Schorr:
Right. So that’s a question we got in, is they’re trying to assess that. One was about how do I prioritize? The other is, by being in a trial, Mike, is it going to make me sicker? Like, to do I have to go through the valley of the shadow of death to get, hopefully, to a better place, and how do you discuss that with your doctor when not everything is known?
Dr. Thompson:
Yeah, maybe I’ll kind of step back and say for phases of trials, Phase I, the intent—both ASCO and NCI say the intent of a Phase I trial is therapeutic. But the statistical design is to evaluate safety. A Phase II is to look at initial efficacy or how well it works, and Phase III is to compare versus standard of care the efficacy. So there’s other types of designs, phase 0, Phase IV and other things, but it used to be, I think, you know, I—we would say don’t go on a Phase I unless that’s the last option because you’ve already gone through the safety initial efficacy if it’s a Phase III trial. It costs a lot of money to do Phase III trials so fewer are being done now, and we’re kind of finding that in this era of precision medicine people are going on trials, and there’s no one rule, but I look at it as if it’s a study involving a lot of different groups of patients, a lot of—you know, it’s not individualized to you, I don’t know, but I think it will have less of a benefit probably than if it’s something like a study designed for BRAF melanoma back when that was a study and you have BRAF. Well, it’s targeted for you. It doesn’t mean it will work, but even if it’s an early phase, a Phase I or II trial, it’s really aimed at your disease.
And we’re finding this with venetoclax, with T1114, and there’s other markers, FLT3 in AML, all these things, and sometimes we find that the drug doesn’t work like we think it’s going to work. The ALK and ROS story in lung cancer, it may benefit other people that we didn’t recognize before, and that’s part of–we’re trying to find people besides T1114 that respond to venetoclax in myeloma because it looks like some people will. But I think as we’re getting more targeted therapy it doesn’t mean there’s no toxicity, but it at least has the suggestion that we’re targeted more at your specific cancer. And some of these pills can have as much toxicity as IV chemo s, but our aim is to decrease toxicity and increase efficacy. And I think, like Jim said, you’ve got to look at different trials and hopefully with a physician who has time to sit down and run through several scenarios. And some people will take the most aggressive therapy because that’s what they’re after, and some people will try something that’s easier and closer to home. So everyone’s values are a little bit different, and you have to try to individualize as a patients.
Andrew Schorr:
Right.
Dr. Thompson:
One thing about trial matching is besides clinicaltrials.gov, there’s myeloma and other groups that are doing these matching, so you can put in characteristics of your cancer and you can try to filter out and get a closer approximation, including at clinicaltrials.gov you can click on the states in the surrounding area or how many miles you’re willing to travel.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. I would mention, put in a plug for our advocacy group friends, whether it’s Lung Cancer Alliance, Bonnie Addaria Lung Cancer or the International Myeloma Foundation with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, you can be in contact with them directly and talk about your situation, and they will often be very aware of trials and how it’s starting to line up with these sub groups, subtypes of illness. Here’s a question we got it in with Jack. I just want to get in a couple more before we have to go. This relates to what you were talking about the National Cancer Institute’s Match trial, as I understand it, Mike. He said, regarding precision medicine I thought I heard that initial results have been disappointing for the NCI trial which treats patients with a specific mutation with a specific drug for that mutation. How does this impact precision medicine? You want to talk on that? Mike?
Dr. Thompson:
Yeah, so the people who are opponents of precision medicine would say that the SHIVA trial in Europe and the NCI Match trials were failures. I think you need to look at it a little more carefully. And if you do a huge screening and you don’t have many drugs you don’t have many matches and not many people are going to benefit. So there are some arms in match that match the accrued the number they wanted, and the drugs didn’t work well. So those were truly we think negative studies. But I think the things about Match are there is a huge interest in the community, and they had thousands or several hundred people screened when they only had a few arms opened, and those people weren’t matches, and it basically overwhelmed the system. And then they had to rejigger it to open up more arms. So I think we could—you know, pick holes in the design of the initial study, but I think it took everyone by surprise how much interest there was in trying to personalize these molecular therapies. And other iterations such as ASCO TAPUR, there’s company versions of it like Novartis Signature, and I think the new design of Match do allow for better match rates, and we’ll see how after they’ve adjusted how well they can hit their targets.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. So that’s an example, where we’re going through a makeover there. Before we go, Jim, we have people watching from all over the world, and Mike alluded to sometimes trials done in other countries. Certainly they are. So we have somebody from New Zealand, we have people from other countries now. How do I access trials? Does it have to be in my country? Or what would you say to an international audience as far as finding out what’s available to them?
Jim Omel:
That’s a difficult question because every country has their own standards. Each country has their own boards that review. What is allowed in some countries are not even allowed. Observational trials can have more importance in some countries than others. Again, it’s a tough question. I think perhaps the person who asked it really needs to be again their own advocate and go online, go with their physician, go to their local support groups, go to their national groups, because they’re the ones that can give that local person their answer. There’s no one set answer for every country because there are some many variances.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. I do want to tell one of my favorite stories. I had a friend Jan Rin in Dublin, Ireland. She had a tremendous problem with more advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia, one of the conditions I have, no trial for her there. She heard about Imbruvica being studied in Leeds, England, different health system, national health system. She was in Ireland, didn’t have it. She got permission from the Irish government to go over to Leeds and be in Dr. Hellmann’s trial there, and I think it saved her life. She would tell you that. So she had to be pushy. There were newspaper articles. She had to do lots of things to make it happen. It’s going to be varied by country but it starts with…
Jim Omel:
…drug like the one you mention, and it’s not available in the country, and there’s so much of that in myeloma. We have many, many drugs in the US that they don’t have in other parts of the world, and it would be so sad to be a patient in those countries, know that a treatment like that is available but not have access to it. So we all need to work to get these drugs available to patients wherever they’re at.
Andrew Schorr:
Right. Amen. I want to just get some final comments from you. We may just go a couple minutes over. So, Mike, the process is improving, I hope, you’re working on it. Can we feel confident that these gaps, if you will, improving it for prevision medicine, more awareness among the doctors wherever we may go, financial assistance, working with the insurance companies, are you working on it so that this process, we can have some improvement and hopefully have higher levels of enrollment and can get drugs approved quicker?
Dr. Thompson:
Yeah, I think we’re all very concerned about it. We should all be aligned in having more patients on trial, moving things faster and getting it done more cheaply. And I think we’re making progress. It’s not as fast as any of us want, but we’re all trying to move the ball forward.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. So, Mike, it comes—excuse me. Jim, it comes down to us then as patients. We have to push, right? We have to see what’s within ourselves, what are we willing to do, understand our clinical situation and what’s going on for our cancer, and we’ve got to push, right?
Jim Omel:
And one of the things we need to push for are more interesting trials. We need to make pharma companies put up their drug against another pharma company’s drug. I think it’s so troubling when they’re afraid to take big steps. They just take little, incremental steps with their trials. If we can put drug A of one company versus drug A of another company—pharma companies are really reluctant to do those kinds went trials, and yet those are the kind that would be exciting to patients. I could give certain names of myeloma drugs, but we won’t get into that. It just needs—we need to get better, more interesting trials, and that will attract patients.
Andrew Schorr:
Okay. So I want to just put in a plug for something. We started something at Patient Power called the Patient Power Ambassador Program, and you can see it listed on our site, where you can share your voice. So we can all work with Jim, work with Dr. Thompson, and we cannot just be getting what’s right for us, but we can push on this process. So please consider doing that. Because I want to thank you, Jim Omel, for not just getting what’s right for you as a myeloma patient, but working on these government panels and with advocacy groups to try to advance it for all of us. Jim Omel, thank you for doing this.
Jim Omel:
Thank you, Andrew. It’s a pleasure to do this, and I’ll keep doing it.
Andrew Schorr:
Yes. And long life, Jim. Thank you.
Jim Omel:
Thank you.
Andrew Schorr:
And, Dr. Mike Thompson, thank you, Mike, for your leadership too and those extra hours put in, not just for programs like this but all the clinical research speaking to industry and the government to try to improve this process. Thanks for being with us, Dr. Mike Thompson.
Dr. Thompson:
Thanks for having me on, and I think this is the some of the most powerful patient educational material that people can get, this type of program.
Andrew Schorr:
All right. Thank you so much. So, folks, we’re all in this together. So you have your own issues about whether you know about trials, whether you want to be in a trial, that’s right for you or a loved one, whether it’s close to home, not close to home, so—but we have these discussions. So please look ongoing at the clinical trials mythbuster series. The let us know how we did today. You can always write to me, andrew@patientpower. Our producer, Tamara, T-A-M-A-R-A, at patientpower.info. And talk to your own doctor and your own healthcare team about clinical trials and where they line up, what are the obstacles, for you participating. And let’s see if we can improve this process and ultimately have more medicine that can lead to a cure for us be available sooner. Thank you for watching. We’ve done our best today, but this is an ongoing discussion. In Carlsbad, California, I’m Andrew Schorr. Jim joined us from Nebraska, Dr. Mike Thompson joined us from Wisconsin. Worldwide, we’re here for you. Remember, knowledge can be the best medicine of all. Please remember the opinions expressed on Patient Power are not necessarily the views of our sponsors, contributors, partners or Patient Power. Our discussions are not a substitute for seeking medical advice or care from your own doctor. That’s how you’ll get care that’s most appropriate for you.
Please remember the opinions expressed on Patient Empowerment Network are not necessarily the views of our sponsors, contributors, partners or Patient Power. Our discussions are not a substitute for seeking medical advice or care from your own doctor. That’s how you’ll get care that’s most appropriate for you.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/CT-Myths.png600600Kara Rayburnhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngKara Rayburn2018-07-09 17:44:042020-01-08 12:30:59Clinical Trial Mythbusters: Does the Clinical Trial Process Need an Extreme Makeover?
Host and Multiple Myeloma patient, Cheri Rineker, leads a panel of Multiple Myeloma patients who have all participated in a clinical trial. The panel discusses what it’s like to join a clinical trial, how they got into a clinical trial, and what it takes to be in a clinical trial.
Transcript:
Cherie Rineker:
My name is Cherie Rineker, and I will be your host today. Today we will be discussing what it’s like to join a trial, how we got in one, and what it takes to be part of a trial. We have a lot to cover, and we have four guests that were kind enough to take time out of their busy days to share their experiences with us. So having said that, I would like to start by asking you, Brian, where are you from, when were you diagnosed and what were some of the trials you were part of?
Brian Helstein:
I am from Southern California I’m one of the five people you will ever meet who was actually born in Hollywood. I was formally diagnosed in February 2011. In retrospect, symptomatic throughout most of 2010, but that’s with 20/20 hindsight.
At the time that I was considering undergoing a stem cell transplant I was offered one clinical trial through City of Hope which formally is identified as BNTCTN0702. It was a three‑arm stem cell transplant trial where one arm would get two stem cell transplants, one arm would get a single stem cell transplant and go directly to maintenance, and a third arm would get the stem cell transplant, go through consolidation therapy and then go to maintenance. And I was in that third arm at the time that that was offered to me‑‑I work in higher ed, and at the time that that was offered to me I said, certainly. If I’m going to be sick somebody besides me needs to learn from this. So I signed up for that.
And when I was going through the consolidation therapy they asked me if I wanted to participate in another trial that was‑‑that was attempting to monitor my maintenance and so that they wanted me on a specific maintenance regimen, and I signed up for that one. So I was on maintenance from that from spring of 2012 through September of 2017.
Cherie Rineker:
Excellent. Thank you, Brian. What about you Matt? Where are you from and what year were you diagnosed? What studies have you participated in?
Matt William:
Hi, Cherie. I grew up in Santa Cruz, California, but I was diagnosed in 2011 in Anchorage, Alaska, and then eventually moved to here in Kauai. I live in Kauai now.
And I have been in four different trials. The first one I don’t remember. It was pretty minor, just a different combination of drugs that were common drugs. And then my second one was my cells with radioactive antibody isotope injection and then followed by an allotransplant. And I had a stem cell transplant before that, so that was my second one within a year. And then I wasn’t given much time left, and I was sent to City of Hope for a study on an agent to help with deletion 17p, and that was followed‑‑let me look at my notes here. I dasanutlin and (?) ixazomib with dexamethasone, and that helped bridge the gap. I wouldn’t have made it to my CAR‑T trial without that. And then eventually just recently finished up a CAR‑T cell trial in Seattle.
Cherie Rineker:
Excellent. Thank you. Eric, can you tell us where you’re from?
Eric Wolf:
Yeah, thank you. I’m from Southern California also, grew up in Pasadena, California. Was diagnosed in 2012 with a vertebra collapse. That’s how my disease presented. I have been on four different trials. Post transplant in 2012, I was part of a shingles vaccine trial. Don’t know if I got the placebo or the vaccine. It was one of those types of trials.
Since then I was on a drug trial that did not work. And then most recently I am currently on a trial. It’s an antibody‑drug conjugate trial through City of Hope, and as part of that I did a gene sequencing trial. So four different trials, and currently on an antibody‑drug conjugate trial.
Cherie Rineker:
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. And last but not least, Barb, could you tell us a little about yourself?
Barb Hansen:
Hi. Thanks, Cherie. This is a great opportunity, I think. I am from Morrison, Colorado, which is a small town outside of Denver. I was diagnose in 2006, December 6. This was after breaking a rib back in March, so it took quite a while to get my diagnosis. And I had been in a clinical trial, the CAL GB100104, which was the trial that helped set the protocol for stem cell transplants now. That happened back in October of 2007.
And my doctor had talked about a stem cell transplant for me, and then later I found out, like two weeks later I found out it was going to be part of this trial and didn’t want to participate. And when they said it was going to be a 15‑year trial I said, yeah, sign me up. So I had the stem cell transplant October of (?) 2017, and then was given the maintenance drug the following February, and then took that maintenance drug for five years and have been in remission ever since then.
Cherie Rineker:
Excellent.
Barb Hansen:
Thank you.
Cherie Rineker:
Thank you, Barb and everybody. Well, many of you know me. I was diagnosed in November of 2012 after six months of much back pain and severe fatigue and was diagnosed with multiple myeloma while in the ICU. And they found three tumors on my spine. One had gone into my spinal cord, and they were surprised I was still standing. And then I did nine induction therapies which only brought my counts down to 80 percent and my bone marrow.
But they went ahead and did a stem cell transplant followed by another, and then I went through a total of 13 lines of therapy. And when the 13th wasn’t successful, relapsed again in December of last year, I told my oncologist that‑‑who wants to put me on four chemo drugs instead of the usually three, I said I want to tryout the CAR‑T.
So very, very sick, I started making the trips to Sarah Cannon, which is about a 14‑hour drive from our house. And was accepted into the trial and received my CAR‑Ts on the 12th of March, and a few weeks later I showed no myeloma at all in my blood and then also none on the PET scan and none in my bone marrow. So what 13 lines of treatment were not able to do over 65 months, CAR‑T basically gave me my life back within weeks. And I’ve become a big proponent of trials ever since.
So what’s a myeloma clinical trial like? The experiences are probably as vast as the amount of patients that are in it. Matt, allow me to start with you. What made you decide to join a trial, and how did your experiences compare to the actual expectations that you had?
Matt William:
Gosh, with my most recent trial I was at the end of the road. It was the last house on the block, so I was eager to get in and did everything I could to do that. I was turned down all over the place. I was on the list in several places including China, and I was told that I only had a couple of months to live and that I probably wouldn’t‑‑there was a‑‑I had an allotransplant so I was being turned down because of that.
And then Seattle Cancer Care Alliance came up with a study that I heard about just through word of mouth. Although I was a patient there I was not aware of it. Somebody told me on social media about it, and I got my name on the list. And my doctor told me I wouldn’t make it, that it wasn’t going to open in time for me, and he was kind enough on his own time to do some searching for me and found the City of Hope trial that targeted my 17p deletion problem.
And so I was willing and eager and trying to get in everywhere and was continually disappointed being turned down, and I thought it was going to happen again there for sure. And I was lucky, there was a doctor, the Dr. Green there was‑‑opened it up a little bit. There was many reasons for him to exclude me, but somehow I just squeaked in there, and my story is very similar to yours. Shortly after, in 28 days, I had no sign of myeloma in my marrow or my blood.
There was a little bit left in my PET scan, but I just got back last week from Seattle and there’s zero sign of myeloma now after my 90‑day test. So I’m just so grateful for clinical trials and to be able to finally get into the CAR‑T trial.
Cherie Rineker:
Yes, Matt. We’ve gone this journey together, and I’m so, so thrilled to hear about your results from last week. Brian, you can you tell us about why you decided to join the trial?
Brian Helstein:
Seriously, I really have spent my entire working life‑‑I’m getting ready to retire, and I’ve spent 50 years in higher ed. I really, really had no clue at the time of diagnosis life expectancy or anything along those lines, and I figured, you know, that I was going to learn how to deal with this, that or the other infirmity the treatment was going to cause, and other people needed to know how to do that and do it better. They needed to learn from my experience. It wasn’t‑‑it just wasn’t something I was prepared to take with me.
And I must say I’m somewhat rebellious about things. I have a dermatologist at this point who does not like me to go running out in the sunlight without a hat, without a long‑sleeved shirt. If he had his way, I would also have ski mask and tights on. No exposure to sunlight, and I have been known to go for a long run in my running shorts and shoes.
This was not going into a clinical trial where I was going to be told you’re going to take these drugs on this day, you’re going to show up at such and such a time on that day. I knew that I was going to have to be disciplined, and I was going to have to follow exactly the protocol of the trial if it was going to be of any benefit to other people. So I made that compromise. I’ll go running without a shirt once a month or whatever, and I will be at the doctor’s office at, you know, 10:15 if that’s the time I’ve been summoned for.
I don’t know any other way to put it. It was a matter of being disciplined so I could share so that others could benefit from this.
Cherie Rineker:
Very good reason. Very good reason, Brian. Thank you for sharing. Eric, why did you decide to join a trial?
Eric Wolf:
Yeah, I think in some respects they are easy, right? So the one that I did having to do with‑‑what is it, the shingles trial, it was there, it was offered to me. It didn’t require much of me but calling in and reporting once a month on what‑‑if I experienced anything. It was really easy, and so in some sense there’s those types of clinical trials that are just sort of tag‑ones to what we’re already doing. Same thing with the extra marrow that was collected to do my gene sequencing. That was not really a big deal.
But like yourself and Matt, there are other clinical trials that we seek out on our own part because we need those to manage our disease, and that was the case with the other two trials I’ve been on. You know, the one I’m on now is because, as much as we don’t like to admit it, our options are limited, and so this is a trial that’s there and available and the timing lines up, and so you do it.
Cherie Rineker:
Excellent. So anybody else besides Matt and I has had to travel long distances for their trials? And then Barb, I’d like to ask you the same question as well, so maybe you can answer that.
Barb Hansen:
Well, I certainly didn’t have to travel. I’m right here in the Denver area. I think what really helped me make the decision, and my family helped also, is that I really felt confident with this new doctor I was seeing. I had seen someone for five months, a hematologist‑oncologist who was not a specialist in multiple myeloma, and then after attending a stem cell seminar and this doc answering five questions in like five minutes I just felt very confident with him. So I started, I transferred my records and just felt very confident with my healthcare team, and it was his recommendation.
Also, I have kind of a science background and my son does cancer research, and I know that the new science isn’t going to happen without clinical trials. I’m a real advocate for clinical trials and did‑‑I volunteered for Colorado Cancer Research Program, which coordinates all the trials. So it’s been a rewarding experience.
Cherie Rineker:
Thank you, Barb. I see you wrote an article at one point about to trial or not to trial, that’s the question. And I was very surprised in my research how few people actually participate, grownups versus children. And I found it wasn’t just the grownups fault, or not wanting to do it, but it’s actually not as easy as Matt and I found with the CAR‑T, and maybe some of you as well, to get into a trial because there are so many requirements in order to get into that.
Did any of you have that issue or an issue of travel, money, or health that made getting into a trial challenging? Matt, start with you. I know you had to travel very far.
Matt William:
Yes. When was I was diagnosed I was in Alaska. There wasn’t really a myeloma specialist, and we got online right away and found the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and we’re really happy there and found a great doctor there. But we had‑‑for my first transplant we relocated down there for 10 months. Luckily, they had a little school and some‑‑for our kids and some housing. But it was expensive. It wasn’t free. They had a social worker that helped us a lot, and we did some fund‑raising. Lots of really great friends that helped out and just really streamlined our finances and our bills and sold a lot of stuff to fund it.
And, yeah, it was very expensive, and yeah, over time it’s really taken a toll on all of our savings and investments and all of that stuff. But it’s worth it, you know. Money can be remade and we can live simpler. And so it was very much worth it. If I wasn’t flexible with that type of stuff I wouldn’t be alive, so I had to do it. And I would go to any lengths to find help and an answer to my problem.
Cherie Rineker:
Right. Right. Thank you. Thank you. I totally understand what you mean, having a young child in my family myself. We have four beautiful daughters. So thank you. We’re glad you chose to hang in there.
Can anyone tell me about how they found out about the trial they joined? Eric, can we start with you? Today, online offers a tremendous amount of resources. Which one, if any, did you use, and how do you stay informed about the latest trials?
Eric Wolf:
A little bit like Matt. I made the decision to move to an area where I knew there would be good support when retired from the military, so I moved up into the LA area near City of Hope knowing that they had fantastic care and availability of trials and other things like that. So I get most of my information through them.
Also, of course, read blogs and read information from the IMF and other things that are coming out. And that all leads to trying to make the best decision. So in the case of my current trial it was a matter of talking with my doctor and look at actually three different trials that were available, any of which could have been a good fit for me.
And then it’s a matter of which one‑‑then it’s kind of a matter of timing, right? It’s just are you sick enough, ironically, to meet all the qualifications for this or that particular trial. And so that’s kind of how I made the decision in concert with my doctor looking at the options available.
Cherie Rineker:
Right. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Brian, what about you?
Brian Helstein:
I was on the fence about having a stem cell transplant, not on the fence about joining a trial. And the‑‑my caregiver, my darling wife, basically pushed me off the fence and said, you will have this. I’ve heard your doctor say that you will have a much better opportunity for long‑term survival if you go through with this.
So at City of Hope, as I was being interviewed and prepped for the stem cell transplant, they gave me a list of options which included amongst other things the participation in a trial. And I was impressed with what they were looking at. I was impressed with what the options were. Unlike Eric’s comment about the shingles trial where he might have gotten a placebo, there was no placebo involved here. There was standard of care treatment, there was standard of care plus and standard of care plus plus, which was what was going to be offered.
So it was at that point a fairly easy decision saying, okay, I have made this commitment to go ahead with the transplant, so let’s see about going ahead with the trial and, as I say, being disciplined enough for follow directions. But it wasn’t‑‑there was no hesitation about it. It was not something where there was a specific start date, again, like Eric, where I needed to fit in or I needed to be so sick or so healthy. It was very much you’re going to do a stem cell transplant, and then beyond that we’re going to put you into one of these three arms and we will monitor you from that point.
Cherie Rineker:
Right. Right. Thank you, Brian. Barb, I’m not sure. Did I already asked you this question, or do you have anything to add?
Barb Hansen:
Well, my stem cell transplant was part of a clinical trial, and when my doctor said to me with a stem cell transplant you might be able to take a drug holiday. That was appealing to me, so that combined, you know, being part of the clinical trial then was a bit of a driving force. I hated being on dexamethasone. I did not sleep well for, well, a long time.
And then, you know, I just can’t encourage people enough to find a multiple myeloma specialist who really knows this complicated disease and treats people individually and just knows what’s best for the patient. And I was very glad that I joined the clinical trial, and I certainly advocate for them whenever I get a chance to. Thank you.
Cherie Rineker:
Excellent. So what advice do any of you‑‑do we all have for those myeloma patients that feel overwhelmed now and through the entire process, what they can do when they feel they’re running out of time or options? What is it that you would like to tell them? What has helped you on the internet? I know Brian at SparkCure really helped me to find the trial that I got into, BB2121, a Celgene CAR‑T trial that ended up giving me my life back. Just like Matt, I only had a couple months left. What would you tell others? Eric, do you maybe care to answer that first?
Eric Wolf:
Yeah. So this disease of course is real science‑e, and we’re always thinking one step ahead, what’s the next thing, what’s the next thing? So part of that calculation should be clinical trials, and so you have to keep up with what’s going on with those. There’s a lot of information out there in different blogs on Cancer Care Network, on Sparks, and those types of things.
Of course, if you’re fortunate enough to be associated with a Cancer Research Center like City of Hope, then that’s a great opportunity. They have posters throughout the campus about different trials that are going on, and of course I can reach out to my doctor at any time and look at those things. But I think that all goes into our calculation of how we’re going to manage our disease and what’s the next step for us.
It’s‑‑different people have‑‑and I’ve ebbed and flowed over the years about how much I want to be involved, and sometimes you just want to take a break. You just want to just do whatever my doctor says, and I don’t want to think about this disease for a while. I just want a couple of months off. We have that option, but it always comes back and comes to the forefront.
So I think as‑‑the advice is to look ahead, think ahead, keep up with what’s out there, but don’t let it overwhelm you. At some point you have to live your life and just not‑‑you can’t live for the disease, live every day thinking about the disease.
Cherie Rineker:
Right. I think we all agree with that, Eric. Matt, what would be any of the advice you would give?
Matt William:
Just going back to how I accessed some of the trials. It started with me, just through my doctors. I had three trials that were just recommended by my specialist, and then it led to‑‑once I got to the CAR‑T cell therapy it was a little harder to find. And I started with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and they were very helpful, and they actually taught me how to do a little searching myself.
And then I got into some Facebook chat room type stuff where I was getting more information, and that’s where I met you. And you recommended SparkCure, so it kind of led to that. And I was doing my own stuff, and I met couple other people that kind of were like Brian, helping out.
But ironically, it turned out to be, you know, I like sending little messages, private messages to people and making acquaintances, and I became friends with this guy, Grant, from South Africa. And he’s the one who told me about the trial that I finally got into, and it was at the very hospital that I was at, but I was unaware of it. And he told me so early I got my name in there.
So I think, leading up to your question, persistence, you know, and don’t give up. And just take it one day at a time. And I like the advice of don’t get overwhelmed with it and just keep a good attitude. And then ultimately be flexible. There’s a lot of help out there and I’m continuing to be helped with my air fare and stuff like that, I forgot to mention before.
And so there’s a lot of‑‑don’t get overwhelmed by the money. There’s some help out there for that, too. And just one day at time and don’t give up and just try to reach out to other people and get‑‑the personal information, one patient to another online probably ended up being the most beneficial to me.
Cherie Rineker:
Thank you, Matt. And I completely agree with you. I’m pretty busy on Facebook myself, and I had people pushing me when my body and my mind could not handle any more and I wanted to give up. And there was one lady in particular who just kept nagging me about it, and just to quiet her up I started following her advice and stuff. And then one thing led to another, and I’m sitting here today because of these personal experiences.
And just the other day there was a gentleman who just basically said, I’m at the end of the line, can’t do no more, and I’ve been working really hard today and yesterday to write letters and talk to my doctors and to try and get him, because I know when we’re that sick sometimes it’s really hard for us to do it ourselves. So absolutely there’s support you can get online‑‑
Matt William:
One more thing, Cherie. I forgot to mention, it’s so important, Patient Power has been amazing with their videos and these interviews, and it really helped get me pointed in the right direction as well and some hope about CAR‑T cell and a little extra information and got me excited and added some hope to my journey.
Cherie Rineker:
Absolutely. Absolutely. We owe a lot to Patient Power. What about you, Barb?
Barb Hansen:
I’m very pro clinical trials, and I do have a couple of venues where I’m able to encourage people to check out that option. One is our multiple myeloma journey partner program, and because I tell my story there having had a stem cell transplant I also include the clinical the trial stories. And so when I’m doing that I encourage people to check out the possibility, the option of going through a clinical trial. And here in the United States we really need to encourage people to do that.
And then the other avenue I have is through the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society first connection program. The Patti Robinson first connection program where I get calls from the society asking me if I’m available to talk to a person who is in another part of the country or here in Colorado. And so it’s a person who just wants a call. They’re either newly diagnosed or they’re going to go through a stem cell transplant or they’re considering a clinical trial, and so we chat and talk and I, you know, point out what I’ve been through and what has worked for me.
Always encourage them to talk to their doctor, and I don’t give medical advice by any means, and it’s encouraging. Very rewarding to talk to people like that.
Cherie Rineker:
Thank you, Barb. Yeah, you just taught me about two things I’d never heard of, so that is wonderful. And I really think when patients talk to each other we can tell other things that the pretty pamphlets that are sent along with our Revlimids or our Velcades doesn’t always talk about all the things that we really experience. So it’s wonderful to hear a person who’s been there explain things to us. You, Brian?
Brian Helstein:
What I would tell somebody, first of all, is take a deep breath. It ain’t going to kill you today. And then the second thing, as we move forward with this, after you’ve had that deep breath, start evaluating what’s important to you, how hard are you prepared to fight this. This goes to what Matt was talking about, the kind of thing that Eric was talking about. What drives you? What motivates you to keep going, and to keep those things in your mind? It will make a tremendous difference in how you approach your various treatment options, the people you work with.
Barb was just talking about talking with, working with her doctors, and one of the things that I think all of us will agree on is you have to feel comfortable with your doctor, and if you don’t, it’s time to find a different doctor, a different treatment facility, whatever. You need to be comfortable as you’re working with these people.
And, again, I think it was you, Eric, said sometimes you want to turn your mind off and stop worrying about this thing for a little bit. I find that that’s fairly easy to do as long as I keep in front of me why I’m prepared to keep fighting, to keep going. At that point, having made that decision, having put that focus on, it makes it easier for me not to focus on being sick. And that’s something I would tell somebody, is why are you here? What do you want to do with the time you’ve got left?
None of us are getting out of here alive. Seriously. All a diagnosis of multiple myeloma does is say, okay, you’ve got something that can kill you, and now you can put a name on it. That’s bringing home in a very visceral way something that we probably intellectually knew but were not emotionally prepared to deal with. And so focusing in on what’s important becomes very important part of moving forward.
Cherie Rineker:
Having a purpose in life is so very important. I always tell people that even when you have cancer you can beat this disease if you keep in your mind you can, like you said, know what’s important, why you’re fighting to stay here, and then just do what you have to do. Absolutely.
I would like to ask one final question of all you, all my guests here today. How is life treating you today? How are you feeling? How are the drugs doing? How are the side effects? How are you sleeping? And what is motivating you? I know, for you, Brian, it’s your running, correct?
Brian Helstein:
Well, I’m working on the retirement actually. Running is just like you brush your teeth in the morning. That’s just a normal activity that I do. Yeah, it’s just something that is part of my daily life, but, no.
I’ve been running a program for the University of Southern California, for example, that enables access to all of our licensed electronic resources, books, journals, databases, for the last 13, 14 years. And I’m trying to clean up my sloppy programming, document my work, and train the people who will be my successors. So that’s my real daily operational motivation at this point.
I’m not doing anything other than looking forward to some silly things in retirement. I want to be on the Champs‑Élysées one day when the Tour de France ends. Okay? It always ends on the Champs‑Élysées. That’s one of my goals in life. It’s not a major driving force. I have five adult children. I would love to see some grandchildren. That’s something you can’t control.
Cherie Rineker:
Right. Eric, what about you? How are you doing these days? You look really healthy. All of you, by the way. Looks like we’ve taken on the beast and we’re winning.
Eric Wolf:
Like Brian, I’m trying to retire again. After one retirement from the military I’m trying to retire again and just kind of working on some other things. The clinical trial I’m on now, it’s been very rough. It’s pushed my blood counts down, so I’ve had trouble with bruising, had trouble with shortness of breath and just getting enough energy. So working through that, and who knows where this will lead, maybe CAR‑T or something else.
But, ultimately, the things that I like to do, I like to ride my motorcycle. I like to backpack and camp, although the backpacking has been kind of cut short these days. Just have done a lot of that over the years. And looking forward to spending more time with the grandbaby. We have a two‑year‑old granddaughter now, so enjoying that time. I will say though, ultimately, my hope is in eternity. And that’s from my Christian faith. I’m enjoying life. I’m enjoying fighting the disease, I actually am, and I’m positive about that. But, like Brian mentioned, we’re all‑‑we’re all going to die eventually, so my hope is ultimately in eternity and the joy of that. So that’s kind of where I am.
Cherie Rineker:
Thank you for sharing. Very nice. How about you, Matt? Girls keeping you busy?
Matt William:
Gosh, yes. I have so much to live for. And I just turned 50. We didn’t think that was going to happen. We’re expecting a grandchild in December, I didn’t think that was going to happen. We just found out about that. And, you know, I really like what you just said. You know, cancer hasn’t been all that bad to us. It’s been‑‑we’ve had our share of struggles. But I’ll tell you what. Our quality of life has actually gotten better. It’s brought us closer together, closer to our god, and we just really don’t take things for granted so much anymore.
And there’s a lot more to look forward to in the future. I’m an avid surfer, or was. I haven’t been out in the surf in over a year, and‑‑because of some phone problems, but I’m thinking that’s not too far away, that I’ll be able to start slowly back at that. And just continuing to raise these kids and enjoying life, you know. And just one day at a time, not worrying about what’s coming next all the time, you know. I feel like I have that little break right now.
Cherie Rineker:
Absolutely. Enjoy it, enjoy it, my friend. Thank you. What about you, Barb. What are your aspirations?
Barb Hansen:
Well, I’m just so thankful to be here. When I started Googling back in 2006 and even talking to my dear doctor, Dr. Jeff (?) Mathes at Colorado Blood Cancer Institute, Richards Rocky Mountain Cancer Center, you know, back then the average life expectancy was three, four years, and now it’s upward of 10, and I’ve beat that so a far. So I am just so thankful to my healthcare team and just grateful to be here enjoying my two grandchildren, who I did not think I would have either. Forest and Estelle, they are the joy of our lives. Really enjoy them.
I golf a little, nine holes. I do get tired because. Of all of back issues, the bone fractures that I had, I do tire. I love doing the volunteer work that has come my way, and now there’s more work they’ve asked me to do primarily through our church. And I’m going to have to start saying no. You know, I’m just taking a break and really enjoying life.
Tomorrow I’m going to Boise to talk to a support group about my journey, and I look forward to those times. It’s really neat getting to be with other people who have this crazy disease and just showing them I’m still here. I went through a stem cell transplant, a clinical trial, and it’s encouraging to help give other people‑‑help them with their journey and be hopeful. Faith, family, and just enjoying the outdoors, creation. That’s what it’s all about. Thank you.
Cherie Rineker:
Yes, thank you all. For me too it’s my family. It’s also I became a huge advocate just for myeloma patients. Because it took so long for them to diagnose me I always thought if my story and my symptoms are out there and somebody is seeing a YouTube of mine and that makes them go to a doctor and find out and say, hey, I want an Kappa light chain test or a Bence Jones 24‑hour urine test or anything.
Or even a doctor that would become more aware because we are putting ourselves out there with our stories, and if even just one person won’t be diagnosed with stage III but maybe as stage I and have a better chance of long‑term survival then I’m extremely grateful for putting myself out there.
So besides enjoying my family I really helping Patient Power and anybody else who comes knocking on my door, whether it’s through Facebook or companies giving talks, giving interviews, anything like that.
So I want to thank you panel for sharing your stories, giving your advice with us today. As we all know, myeloma is a very difficult, painful disease to control, and I know without online support and things like Patient Cafe and SparkCure it would be a lot harder for me and I likely wouldn’t even be here today.
Thanks also to our listeners for tuning in. We hope we were able to answer some of your questions about trials and how to get into them. Reach out to Patient Power with any questions, please. And we hope you’ll tune soon in again for our next show.
Please remember the opinions expressed on Patient Empowerment Network are not necessarily the views of our sponsors, contributors, partners or Patient Empowerment Network. Our discussions are not a substitute for seeking medical advice or care from your own doctor. That’s how you’ll get care that’s most appropriate for you.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/PATIENT-CAFE-®.png600600Kara Rayburnhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngKara Rayburn2018-06-28 15:01:112019-09-02 12:27:31Myeloma Patient Cafe® June 2018 - Participating in a Clinical Trial
You’ve gotten a cancer diagnosis. You’ve selected an oncologist as your partner, working toward “No Evidence of Disease,” or NED (NED is every cancer patient’s very best friend). Your and your oncologist are working up a treatment plan, and you want to talk about clinical trials as part of that plan. Should you kick off that discussion, or wait until your onc brings it up?
YES, definitely bring up clinical trials yourself, if your oncologist hasn’t started that conversation. If you’re not sure how to kick off that discussion, here are some tips.
There’s an article in the Journal of Oncology Practice, “Identifying and Selecting a Clinical Trial for Your Practice,” that talks clinicians through the process of selecting clinical trials for their oncology practice. Reading through that can help you craft some great questions, and open a productive conversation with your treatment team about clinical trials for your cancer.
The National Institutes of Health has a great tip-sheet for oncologists on how to talk to their patients about clinical trials. You can use that to frame the conversation you’d like to have with your own oncologist about your clinical trial options. I’ve often found that reading articles and tip-sheets aimed at the clinical side of the equation have helped me accelerate discussions with my own clinical teams about treatment options, for cancer and for other medical conditions.
When you’re dealing with a cancer diagnosis, you want to have all your options on the table, and make the most informed decisions possible. Opening up a dialogue with your oncology team about clinical trials early in the treatment process will give you the information you need for those “most informed decisions.”
Another reason to open those discussions early is to gauge your oncologist’s response to shared decision making, and participatory medicine. If your oncologist doesn’t welcome self-advocacy on your part, it’s better to know early in the treatment process so you can shift to another, more participatory practice.
You are the focus of your cancer treatment team’s work. Lead the discussions, share your perspective, and participate fully in your treatment planning. Opening the discussing of clinical trials is a great way to get your team on your page about treatment and outcome preferences, and to unlock the power of precision medicine.
Casey Quinlan covered her share of medical stories as a TV news field producer, and used healthcare as part of her observational comedy set as a standup comic. So when she got a breast cancer diagnosis five days before Christmas in 2007, she used her research, communication, and comedy skills to navigate treatment, and wrote “Cancer for Christmas: Making the Most of a Daunting Gift” about managing medical care, and the importance of health literate self-advocacy. In addition to her ongoing work as a journalist, she’s a popular speaker and thought leader on healthcare system transformation from the ground up.
https://powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/Untitled-design-16.png600600Casey Quinlanhttps://www.powerfulpatients.org/pen/wp-content/uploads/New-Logo-300x126.pngCasey Quinlan2018-04-16 16:13:532019-09-02 12:32:00Talking to Your Oncologist About Clinical Trials
Editor’s Note: After a long and resilient battle with primary peritoneal cancer, Roberta Aberle, 53, of Auroro, CO passed away on November 1, 2017 with her husband David Oine at her side. Even as she battled her own cancer, Roberta was a tireless advocate for patient care, hoping to improve the lives of others also fighting life-threatening illnesses. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her.
“The pioneering spirit is less about thinking up new ideas as ridding ourselves of dogma and old habits that hold us captive in thinking.” Bertrand Piccard http://bertrandpiccard.com/home
Profound. Who wants to be captive in their thinking? No one I can name. Especially in the world of healthcare. Medical sciences are far surpassing dogma in many aspects of delivering care to patients – in technology, in documentation, in processes and structure, in diagnostics, in pharmaceuticals and other interventions such as surgical techniques all the way to preventative care. Some diseases have been eradicated entirely, others are manageable and have become chronic rather than life threatening.
It is invigorating to have even a small part in innovations with the potential to alter and improve the landscape of health and well-being. In last week’s broadcast of Mythbuster’s #3 – Do Patients Have a Voice While Participating in Clinical Trials? Our host, Andrew Schorr brought up the notion of being perceived as a pioneer in cancer treatment with each of our respective roles in clinical trials. Our panel was comprised of an oncologist and a clinical trial navigator (a resource who pairs patients to relevant trials)and myself, a patient advocate and participant in multiple clinical trials.
One trial in which I participated led to the provisional release of a therapy added to front line treatment for Ovarian, Fallopian Tube and Primary Peritoneal Cancer who test positive for either the BRCA 1 or 2 inherited genetic mutations. Addition of the oral medication researched has since shown astounding results for patients with these forms of cancer that prolongs disease free progression an average of 19.1 months. https://www.lynparza.com/ovarian-cancer-treatment.html
I personally never considered myself a pioneer, but in this context, I suppose it fits. Without patients, researchers and oncologists exhausting every resource to identify what can extend our life or achieve a cure for incurable forms of cancer; how can we validate new inroads to treatment? Regardless of how it is termed, I take great pride in participating in clinical trials to prove efficacy for patients of today and the future. Pioneer. Forerunner. Research Subject. Terms mean less to me than the knowledge that if just one patient considers a clinical trial as a result of seeing our webinar, it is validation enough my involvement matters.
Shortly after the broadcast, I was talking to a new acquaintance at a gathering about the program and my personal experience with various clinical trials. As I detailed my journey for her, she asked a time or two, so “ALL you ever did was take experimental medicines?” Communication breakdown. But yet, I was quite happy she expressed her question in the way she had so I could clarify. My response was swift, “No. In actuality, in only one clinical trial was the medication ‘‘experimental’. Other than one, I was enrolled in only Phase 3 or higher trials where the medications were known to be effective, they just needed more data to understand dosage, frequency and when to use in combination with existing chemotherapy drugs to amplify the power of each.”
Despite being in multiple clinical trials, I have yet to achieve remission and the elusive cure for my form of cancer; yet, I still chime praise for each trial I’ve been enrolled in. I consider each an opportunity a peek into the future of cancer management. While I cannot claim certain things regarding my cancer as a result of clinical trials, each one has earned me quality time with loved ones or has been a bridge to a new treatment option not available to me were it not for the commitment of researchers, oncologists and patients worldwide.
When you view the webinar rebroadcast or in summation, my hope is that you will be receptive to clinical trials as an additional avenue available to you. Beyond our specific topic of whether patients have a voice in clinical trials, in our segment, our message is clearly that patients do retain their voice during a clinical trial. Of equal importance, collectively our outcomes and first hand experiences are an even more powerful voice chiming their merits. In many ways the patient voice is important not just during, but extends long past the time parameters of trials.
Roberta Aberle is a cancer thriver, despite her 2012 diagnosis with an advanced and aggressive type of cancer. Her cancer; primary peritoneal carcinomatosis, is very rare and lethal, giving her an extremely poor prognosis to live longer than 6 mos. Yet, 5 1/2 years later, she is an active advocate for the cause of cancer as a writer and speaker. Her articles have appeared in Conquer and Coping magazines. Her cancer blog: MyLifeline.org/RobertaAberle and social media site, Live With It on Facebook, in which she shares insights on how life looks from the eyes of cancer, has a following of thousands around the globe. Roberta’s writing appeals to not only those facing cancer or caring for a loved one with cancer; her work contains messages relevant about the need to approach each and every day with appreciation and gratitude whether you live within the fearful confines of cancer or not.
