NCI study on newly developed cancer treatments

Meta-analysis of cancer clinical trials finds 41 percent are superior to existing treatments

An analysis of phase III clinical trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute between 1956 and 2006 revealed that new treatments are superior to conventional treatments nearly half of the time.

The analysis of 624 trials involving 216,451 patients determined that experimental treatments were superior in 41 percent of clinical trials.

15 percent of trials resulted in a treatment breakthrough and two percent of trials discovered treatments that reduced death rates by 50 percent or more. On the whole experimental treatments had a 5 percent relative reduction in death rate compared to conventional treatments.

One major obstacle was that seven in 10 trials were inconclusive. The authors of the study blamed this on capacity problems and researchers having overly optimistic treatment expectations for investigational therapies.

Of the 30 percent of studies that achieved statistically significant results, experimental treatments were favored by a margin of 4:1 to standard treatments.

Clinical trials rely on voluntary enrollment and researchers are optimistic that the results could facilitate more participation in future studies if patients are aware of their chances.

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