Many understand that being treated on a clinical trial means that they will get the very best quality care available. Some do so in the hopes of preventing cancer. Others do so because traditional treatments have not been working for them and clinical trials offer hope for improving existing treatment and for increasing disease-free survival time. Clinical trials also offer an opportunity to contribute to a research effort that may help others. Clinical trials can be sponsored by a number of different groups including government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, universities, and health care institutions and organizations.
Every trial has strict requirements regarding eligibility.
The only way to find out if you are eligible is to contact the sponsor of the research and find out what the protocol is. The protocol, or rules that will govern the trial, determine who can participate and how many people are needed. To qualify for a study you may need to be a certain age, have a certain kind of disease, be a required gender and or meet other qualifications. There are very strict guidelines in place to safeguard people who enroll in clinical trials. All groups that conduct clinical trials must have an independent IRB, consisting of physicians, advocates, scientists, ethicists, administrators, the general public and others.