After Monday’s examination of common hesitance in cancer treatment clinical trials involving children, it seems equally important to look into the importance of clinical studies for cancer in general.
What impact have cancer clinical studies of the past had?
Clinical studies are a vital part of advancing our knowledge of cancer and improving our treatment of it. Studies of the past are enabling people to live longer, healthier lives today. They allow doctors to determine which treatments are safe, and which work better than existing treatments. They have added to our collective knowledge of various types of cancer, and have aided in everything from treatment to screening and even prevention.
Why are cancer clinical studies still so important?
While clinical studies may not be the best course of action for every single cancer patient, participation in them can lead to a higher quality of life during and after treatment. They also continue to be one of the best ways for us to make progress against cancer, and any information gained only goes on to help improve care for future patients.
Thanks to clinical research for cancer, treating cancer has become more precise: Precision medicine has helped researchers over the past decade to move cancer treatment from one-size-fits-all to an individual approach that is most likely to successfully treat a person’s cancer based on the detailed genetic information of that person’s specific cancer. With advances leading to faster and less expensive gene sequencing, precision medicine is starting to be used more often to treat patients, most notably in the treatment of lung cancer.
Over the past years, some of the most groundbreaking developments include two new types of immunotherapies that help to better fight cancer cells, advanced research developments about the microbiome connection to cancer, new understandings about cancer cells' metabolism for new drug targets, the benefits of receiving palliative care early in cancer treatment and much more. Recent studies also suggest that analyzing tumor DNA in blood, called liquid biopsies, may help to detect cancer early on, guide higher precision in the treatment of cancer, and track treatment responses.
How can Citruslabs help?
We are a world-leading virtual CRO, offering clinical trial services from patient recruitment to trial completion. Whether you are looking for an educated patient base and pursue clinical studies with the confidence that you are well-informed and prepared, or you’re looking to lead your own clinical research more efficiently - we can help.
Citrus is a fully integrated recruitment and retention software that fits any clinical trial and simplifies the implementation of patient engagement in your clinical trial. Whether you are already working with CTMS systems or not, Citrus is the perfect add-on to make patient interaction effective.
Since 2015, our team has been hard at work raising awareness of clinical trials across the globe. A Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ company and a graduate of the renowned Techstar program in New York, Citruslabs is at the forefront of patient recruitment and retention technologies. With over 3 million patients now recorded on our databases, our patient recruitment dashboard is fast becoming the most efficient method of trial recruitment.
Now a #1 health app in 17 countries, our Mindmate app is helping to revolutionize the way we think about healthcare. Mindmate “[takes] senior care into the digital age” (Forbes, 2018) by providing people with cognitive decline the essential tools to help them rebuild and maintain strong mental health. Trusted by millions of users, our health community continues to grow as the content available expands to the needs of individuals today.
With more than 200 research sites now using the Citrus platform to screen thousands of patients every month, researchers are now well on their way to finding new treatments for hundreds of different health conditions - something that just would not be possible without a technological solution. Make sure that your clinical trial is in the lucky 12% and turn that luck into guaranteed results with Citrus.
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And If you’d like to know more about how Citruslabs can help you recruit more effectively, get in touch with our team here.