Cancer research trials, sometimes called clinical studies or trials, are carried out to try and find new and better treatments.
Trials can be carried out to:
- Test new treatments, such as new chemo drugs, gene therapies or cancer vaccines.
- Look at new combinations of existing treatments, or change the way they are given, in order to make them more effective or to reduce side effects.
- Compare the effectiveness of drugs used to control symptoms of cancer.
- Understand more about how cancer treatments work.
Trials are the only reliable way to work out whether a new treatment is better than what is already available.
Research has found that people having their treatment within a trial tend to do better than similar patients treated outside a trial. This doesn’t mean that the trial treatments are always better. It’s probably because hospitals that carry out research studies have access to good equipment and follow precise guidelines. People in trials are usually very carefully monitored too. But, you should never feel that you have to enter into a research study if you don’t want to.
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