New kind of trial aims to speed cancer drug development

LONDON (Reuters) Scientists and drugmakers are pioneering a new kind of clinical trial that Canada Goose Coats On Sale changes the way cancer drugs are studied, potentially cutting both the time and cost of bringing them to market.

Instead of testing one drug at a time, a novel canada goose lung cancer study announced on Thursday will allow British researchers to test Cheap Canada Goose jackets up to 14 drugs from AstraZeneca and Pfizer at the same time Canada Goose Parka within one trial.

The aim is to quickly pinpoint medicines that buy canada goose jacket cheap can fight canada goose factory sale advanced lung cancer cheap Canada Goose by targeting specific rare genetic mutations and it upends the Canada Goose Jackets normal approach of putting a particular drug at the centre of a study.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of charity Cancer Research UK, which is working on the 25 million pound ($42 million) project with Canada Goose sale the two drugmakers, said the new canada goose coats approach would the rule Canada Goose Online book uk canada goose outlet on how we do clinical trials

are shifting the emphasis from designing a trial around a specific drug to designing it around selecting from a range of drugs for a specific patient, he told reporters.

The National Lung Matrix canadagooseoutleta trial, which is expected to open in July or August at centers across Britain, is part of a growing trend in cancer research to remodel the way new drugs are tested to keep up with the age of genomic medicine fine tuning treatments to the genetic profile of cheap canada goose uk patients. group Friends of Cancer Research said in November it was backing a similar canada goose clearance multi drug, multi arm clinical trial to evaluate five experimental canada goose coats on sale lung cancer drugs.

Because any single gene mutation behind a particular cancer can be extremely rare, perhaps affecting as few as 1 or 2 percent of patients, studying one drug at a time is extremely challenging.

The new trial offers a way around this by creating a protocol under which scientists can test patients tumor samples for multiple gene faults and then uk canada goose assign them to an appropriate canada goose uk black friday drug from among those in the trial canadian goose jacket for testing.

NO RANDOMISATION Significantly, it does away with the idea of randomization, where some patients are given a treatment and others get a substance for comparison traditionally the gold standard in drug testing.

Increasingly, researchers are questioning whether canada goose store such Canada Goose Outlet randomization makes sense in patients with incurable cancer if a certain treatment is genetically bound to work much better in some people than others.

Faster, smaller testing could shave years off the usual drug approval process. That also points to lower costs, although firms will be left with small markets from which to recoup investment.

premature to talk about pricing but it will make drug development more cost effective, said Menelas Pangalos, AstraZeneca head of innovative medicines.

Mace Rothenberg, senior vice president at Pfizer Oncology, said: should be a more efficient process but it is for a more canada goose uk outlet niche, focused group of patients.

The new trial in non small cell lung cancer will use up to 12 experimental buy canada goose jacket drugs from AstraZeneca, canada goose uk shop including two compounds designed to boost the immune system that will be given to patients who do not Canada Goose online show one of 21 sets of gene faults.

Pfizer, meanwhile, is supplying Xalkori, which is approved for certain rare lung cancers canada goose black friday sale and may also work in some canada goose clearance sale even more unusual types, as well as the experimental drug palbociclib, which has shown promise in breast cancer.

Around 15 to 20 patients will be given each drug initially and promising medicines could be fast tracked into larger scale testing. Those that show no benefit will quickly be dropped.

Kumar said new medicines could be added to the existing trial as science advances, and he hopes other drug companies will join the programme in due course.