Clinical Trials of Cancer Drugs Will Get Funding of $6 Million

Health & Technology: Clinical Trials of Cancer Drugs Will Get Funding of $6 Million
By Jill Carroll

07/22/2002
The Wall Street Journal
B5
(Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

WASHINGTON -- To speed cancer drugs to market, the government and five major drug makers are jointly funding grants to improve early clinical trials, the first step in getting cutting-edge cancer treatments to patients.

The grants, totaling $6 million, will go to National Cancer Institute-funded cancer centers to find better ways to perform the early experimental drug trials. Andrew von Eschenbach, director of the National Cancer Institute, said "if suddenly tomorrow" there were enough patients and available drugs to test all the new cancer therapies ready for trials "frankly we couldn't handle it."

The early clinical trials are the first time a drug is tested in people and mainly help determine if the drug is safe. Institutions will have to compete for the money, which will be given out over two years in allotments of five to eight grants. "This collaboration on cancer trials will serve as a model to help accelerate the pace of clinical trials research in other diseases," said National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni.

Cancer researchers say patients often don't participate in trials because they don't know about them or there needs to be improvement in infrastructure to perform the trials that are increasingly complex as treatments become more targeted. "These all have a big impact on the efficiency of our development," said Mel Sorenson, head of clinical oncology at GlaxoSmithKline PLC. Aventis SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Eli Lilly & Co. and Novartis AG are also participating in the initiative. Overall, only 3% to 4% of cancer patients participate in trials. Most of those participants are children; about 60% to 70% of children with cancer participate in trials.

Harmon Eyre, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said about 400 new cancer medicines or treatments are ready for clinical trials each year, but only about 100 can be tested at a time. Mr. Eyre said one of the many factors that contributes to patients not knowing about trials is that drug companies don't widely publicize their trials for fear of giving away trade secrets. He said companies often use the same research institutions for their trials and don't seek patients outside those several facilities.

An NCI letter to cancer-center directors outlining the grant program says special attention will be given to proposals that would increase the access of minorities and the elderly in the trials, groups that have been underrepresented in the past. Centers will have to submit proposals for addressing any number of "barriers" that make it harder for the trials to run and, if successful, their plan will be sent to other centers facing similar problems.