Mesothelioma Clinical Trials (NCI PDQ)
NCI’s PDQ® Cancer Clinical Trials Registry is the largest registry of cancer clinical trials in the world. The registry contains trial descriptions for more than 5,000 clinical trial protocols that are open/active and approved for patient accrual (accepting patients), including trials for cancer treatment, genetics, diagnosis, supportive care, screening, and prevention. PDQ also includes behavioral, epidemiological, health services research, and biomarker and laboratory analysis studies.
In addition, the registry contains descriptions for more than 16,000 clinical trials that have been completed or are closed to patient accrual. The PDQ Registry is widely used by patients, health professionals providing cancer care, clinical researchers, and meta-analysts. Trials in the registry are searchable on the NCI Web Site at http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/search.
- Trial information is accessible to a large international audience of cancer patients, caregivers, family members, and health professionals. The information is available through the NCI Web site and through other clinical trial Web sites, such as the National Library of Medicine’s ClinicalTrials.gov, the National Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups’ TrialCheck, and the American Cancer Society’s Clinical Trials Search Service. The PDQ Cancer Clinical Trials Registry is distributed to these services through a licensing program.
- NCI will provide all clinical trial listings to the ClinicalTrials.gov registry. Investigators do not have to register their trials separately with ClinicalTrials.gov in order to meet their regulatory requirement to register all phase II, III, or IV trials of treatments for serious or life-threatening diseases in Clinicaltrials.gov, as specified in the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997. NCI will also provide investigators with the NCTID, the unique identifier for a trial in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry. This will facilitate the publication of trial results according to the requirements set forth by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
- Investigators and their research teams do not need to write trial descriptions. Trained writers are available to create trial descriptions in a standardized manner. The use of formal guidelines for writing the trial descriptions ensures consistency among trial summaries and makes it easier for users to read about and compare trials.
After a clinical trial is completed, the researchers look carefully at the data collected during the trial before making decisions about the meaning of the findings and further testing. After a phase I or II trial, the researchers decide whether to move on to the next phase, or stop testing the agent or intervention because it was not safe or effective. When a phase III trial is completed, the researchers look at the data and decide whether the results have medical importance.
The results of clinical trials are often published in peer-reviewed, scientific journals. Peer review is a process by which experts review the report before it is published to make sure the analysis and conclusions are sound. If the results are particularly important, they may be featured by the media and discussed at scientific meetings and by patient advocacy groups before they are published. Once a new approach has been proven safe and effective in a clinical trial, it may become standard practice. (Standard practice is a currently accepted and widely used approach.)
The National Library of Medicine’s Web site offers links to resources for finding the results of clinical trials. It includes information about published and unpublished results. This resource can be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/ctresults.html on the Internet.
