Clinical Trials Update from NCI, February 2019

Clinical Trials Update from NCI, February 2019

Clinical Trials
Updates from the National Cancer Institute
Clinical Trials News
		Treatment for Children with Leukemia Also Effective for Adolescents, Young Adults An intensive treatment regimen developed specifically for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is also effective for older adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with the disease, according to new results from a clinical trial. The researchers compared the results from patients in the NCI-sponsored phase 2 trial with results from an earlier NCI-sponsored trial. That trial used an adult treatment regimen in AYA patients with ALL.
Pembrolizumab Now Second Immunotherapy Approved to Treat Merkel Cell Carcinoma People with advanced or metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and often deadly type of skin cancer, may be treated with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) following approval by the Food and Drug Administration. The approval was based on results from an NCI-sponsored phase 2 clinical trial conducted through the Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network.
		After Lung Cancer Screening, Follow-Up Procedures May Be Riskier than Thought A new study of medical insurance claims of more than 300,000 people suggests that diagnostic procedures following low-dose CT screening for lung cancer may lead to more frequent complications than researchers with the NCI-sponsored National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) found.
Lung-MAP Precision Medicine Trial Expands To Include More Patients The Lung Cancer Master Protocol (Lung-MAP), the first precision medicine trial in lung cancer supported by the National Cancer Institute, is undergoing a major expansion to include patients with all non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC). NSCLC accounts for about 85 percent of all lung cancer diagnoses in the United States. The trial previously tested treatments for people with advanced stage squamous cell lung cancer.
Find NCI-Supported Clinical Trials Use our search form to find a clinical trial or other research study that may be right for you or a loved one.
Clinical Trials Information for Patients and Caregivers
What Are Clinical Trials? Clinical trials are research studies that involve people. They are a vital step in the process of developing new treatments, screening and diagnosing cancer, and preventing cancer. This page can help people who want to learn more about what clinical trials are and why they are important.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor about Treatment Clinical Trials Clinical trials can be confusing. This page offers questions that patients who are thinking about taking part in a cancer treatment clinical trial can ask their health care providers.
NCI-Supported Clinical Trials That Are Recruiting Patients
New Diagnostic Tool for People with a Hereditary Gastric Cancer Syndrome This phase 2 trial will test the ability of confocal endoscopic microscopy to detect early-stage gastric cancer in people with hereditary diffuse gastric cancer syndrome. People with this syndrome are at increased risk for gastric cancer and need regular endoscopic examinations to detect cancer in their stomach before it becomes advanced.
Immunotherapy Before and After Surgery for Localized Kidney Cancer This phase 3 trial will help determine if treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo), an immunotherapy drug, administered both before and after nephrectomy prevents cancer from returning in patients with kidney cancer that has not spread. Patients scheduled to undergo nephrectomy will be randomly assigned to receive immunotherapy or undergo observation only. Researchers want to see if nivolumab improves recurrence-free and overall survival without causing severe side effects.
Adding Immunotherapy to Standard Chemotherapy for Stage 3 Colon Cancer This phase 3 trial is comparing standard combination chemotherapy plus the immunotherapy agent atezolizumab (Tecentriq) with chemotherapy alone for patients with stage 3 colon cancer with deficient DNA mismatch repair. The study will help determine if the addition of atezolizumab helps these patients survive longer without their cancer returning.