What You Need to Know

Why trials are important: Finding treatments and cures more quickly

Many of the cancer treatments available to us today exist because the surgical techniques, chemotherapy, diagnostic procedures, intervention procedures, radiation or hormonal therapies were studied using real people in the real world to find answers to the treatment or cure of cancer. Once we discover a treatment is successful, it becomes the new way of caring for patients, also called the standard of care.

Today there is a persistent shortage of volunteers for clinical trials and this delays the development of new treatments for cancer by several years. The vast majority of children with cancer in the US are enrolled into a cancer clinical trial, but less than 3% of adult cancer patients enroll in a cancer study. If more patients enrolled in a cancer clinical trial – we would find answers and solutions more quickly, and many lives would be saved.