Current and Upcoming Breast Cancer Clinical Trials at Duke
A clinical trial is a research study with human volunteers. Today, clinical trials are central to translating medical research into proven patient care. Each study is designed to answer specific questions. Answering the questions leads to better ways to prevent, diagnose, or treat cancer. The goal of many clinical trials is to show whether a treatment approach is effective. Genomic profiles are very new and therefore we need to determine the best way to use them as a part of a treatment plan. Since these methods are still being developed, currently genomic profiles are only available to patients taking part in clinical trials. The goal of our breast cancer clinical trials is to collect more information about the genomics profiles of different types of breast cancers. We currently have one breast cancer genomics trial available, a pre-operative trial for early stage breast cancer.
A Pre-Operative Clinical Trial for Early Stage Breast Cancer
Together with Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, we have opened a clinical trial to study if genomic profiles of tumors can predict responses to treatment in women with early stage, localized breast cancer. The study will involve pre-operative therapy, also called neoadjuvant therapy, which is intravenous chemotherapy treatment given before interventional surgery
Those who agree to participate in this trial are randomly put into one of two study groups. In one group, the genomic profile will be used to choose the type of chemotherapy. In the other group the choice of chemotherapy is not based on the genomic profile. An important goal of the trial is to determine if genomic profiles are useful to help doctors choose which chemotherapy is best for each patient. The trial is currently open and we expect to recruit patients until 2010.