Clinical Trials in the Evolving Landscape of Precision Medicine

Landmark discoveries and advances in cancer science provide opportunities for improved clinical therapies. But to bring these therapies to the right patients quickly and as safely as possible requires well-designed clinical trials. 

In this Cell Press Virtual Panel, we discuss clinical trial design for cancer therapy. This panel brings together experts in the field of clinical oncology: Lillian Siu from Princess Margaret Cancer Center, Carl June from the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, and Patrick Ott from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Moderated by Harmony Turk of Cancer Cell and Sara Hamilton of Cell Reports Medicine.

Click the time stamp to jump to the most relevant question and discussion.

01:42 What do you see as the major bottlenecks in clinical trials? And is there a way to better design trials to overcome these hurdles?

12:06 Could you comment on any of the technical challenges associated with these trials during the clinical development, technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 and CAR T cell therapy?

19:46 What are some of the specific considerations for designing trials where you are testing a specific therapy in multiple different cancer types at the same time?

23:23 Could you talk about some of the key considerations for designing trials for personalized vaccines?

45:08 How do you see data sharing affecting clinical trial design? Do you think there are improvements that can be made to the current data sharing suggestions that could help clinical trial design?

[melanomapatientnetworkeuro]

At min30 and actually still missing a patient perspective on clinical trial designs here. For patients, clinical trials are treatment. The point is to have optimal overall outcomes, not just one trial in isolation, and if you have an effective 1st line therapy with PD1 why should ANY patient forgo that just because someone wants to know how effective their new favourite drug really is, without that annoying PD1 background?

[melanomapatientnetworkeuro]

Very interesting to listen and lots of relevant bits- we need to aim for more ambitious outcomes, good drugs make a huge difference and there is a lot of redundancy. Bit in a mixed mind about this- innovation isn't always saltatorial: Unless we alter our primary strategies we will eg be stuck with standard regimens forever if we don't do this painful tweaking of dose optimisation, so some incremental innovation is necessary. Also, yet another PD1 won't wow anyone but parallel innovation does drive speed- something very much in patient interest.