Mesothelioma Patients May be Willing to Undergo Additional Tests for Clinical Trials if They Can Receive Advanced Experimental Treatment
Mesothelioma, a rare asbestos-related cancer, is one of many cancers that are most often diagnosed at a late stage, making effective treatment of the disease very difficult. There is currently no known cure for mesothelioma, but many clinical trials and studies are underway that could offer hope to mesothelioma patients through discovery of new approaches to treat the disease, to develop procedures to detect the disease at an early stage and to find a cure.
Now researchers at Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale Healthcare and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) report that cancer patients are willing to undergo additional tests and procedures so they can receive advanced experimental treatment in clinical trials. Clinical trials are critically important to find new treatments and cures for cancers, such as mesothelioma, but without commitment from patients a clinical study can quickly fail.
The Mayo study included 61 patients with advanced malignancies and the researchers reported that “the overall willingness to undergo study-required tests was very high.” Patients were most willing to undergo less invasive tests such as urine, blood, x-rays and echocardiograms. The patients were least willing to undergo tumor and skin biopsies and MRIs. Ultimately, most patients were willing to give one tumor biopsy sample per study, and often two.
The samples gathered during trials are important for physicians and the researchers to better understand the molecular makeup of cancer cells. In order for the clinicians to get a clear picture of what the drug does to the body, and what the body does to a drug, patients must be willing to undergo the tests.
The authors found that inconvenience and prior negative experiences modestly affected patients’ willingness to undergo similar tests again. In addition, college educated patients and patients with insurance coverage were more willing to undergo the tests.
“This is important information, because it tells us that we can design clinical studies that ask patients to give extra tumor biopsies,” said Mitesh J. Borad, M.D., Associate Director of Phase I Drug Development at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona and the study’s senior author. Dr. Tibes, who also is Associate Director of Mayo Clinic’s Acute and Chronic Leukemia Program, adds this “study could serve as the basis of further exploration toward the design of patient-friendly, biomarker-driven clinical studies involving cancer.”
These results show that mesothelioma patients that participate in clinical trials not only help the medical community in general, but they can realize many benefits for their specific medical needs.
The study, “Patient willingness to undergo pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic tests in early phase oncology trials,” is scheduled for print publication in the July 15, 2011, edition of Cancer, published by the American Cancer Society.
To find a list of clinical trials related to mesothelioma see ClinicalTrials.gov.
