Monday, May 11, 2015

ASH 2014: Professor Hillmen Discusses the Trials Acceleration Program for CLL (Chronic lymphocytic leukemia)

In this week's new postings on the CLL Society website on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (May 11th,13th, and 15th), Professor Peter Hillmen from Leeds, England outlines the sorry state of traditional trial design and the problems it creates, or more accurately the problems that it doesn't solve, for us CLL patients. Professor Hillmen heads up CLL research in the United Kingdom.

There are so many new CLL drugs and so many more possible combinations that need to be explored. And that can take a long, long time. Sadly, too long for some of us.

But Dr. Hillmen offers a practical, agile solution that is now happening in the United Kingdom.

During the three-part interview, Professor Hillmen outlines a consolidated strategy called TAP (Trials Acceleration Programme) to get us the answers we need more quickly. Trial design, surrogate markers and how well they translate with novel therapies, and statistics are explained during the course of our interview done in December 2014 at the ASH (American Society of Hematology) Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

I understand if your eyes begin to glaze over when we start to discuss trial design and statistics, but just as it is important that we know about the drugs we are getting, it is equally important that we know about trials we are getting. Proper trial design and proper rendering of the results can change and save lives.

But I will let Professor Hillmen explain it here in a direct link. His excitement and pride are palpable. Please check the CL Society website again on Wednesday and Friday for the 2nd and third parts of our interview.

As we have discussed extensively in the issue of equipoise and crossovers, trial designs must reflect the needs of the patients.

Labels: , , , , , ,

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is the kind of trial design desperately needed in all cancers given the number of precision medicines and the time it would take to process trials the old fashioned way. Looking forward to watching more and hoping--really hoping--research centers in other parts of the world are watching too. Thank you Brian and Dr. Hillmen!

May 11, 2015 at 2:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wondering and hoping if the United States FDA would reevaluate and follow suit in this thinking . Same drugs, same drug companies. Trials are desperately need to finish sooner than later!! WE AIN'T GOT THAT MUCH TIME , SOME OF US ANYWAYS.
thanks for all you do Dr!!

May 12, 2015 at 7:10 AM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home