Cancer Clinical Trials Take Too Long To Begin, NCI Says

From The Cancer Letter, April 11, 2008:

NCI and its clinical trials cooperative groups and cancer centers need to work together to cut the time it takes to activate cancer clinical trials, an Institute official told an NCI advisory group.

“It takes on average 800 days to go from an idea—the documentation of the idea—to the time the study is ready to go to a comprehensive cancer center to be initiated,” said James Doroshow, director of the NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis. “It takes another three to six months at a cancer center for it to open that trial,” Doroshow said. “That’s the median. If you look at the maximum [times], it’s worse. In some cases it takes five years.”

NCI Director John Niederhuber has vowed to cut the trials activation time in half, Doroshow said.

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tags: clinical trials