Celebrating Milestones in Local Clinical Trials

_{The Cancer Foundation celebrates a grant to the Clinical Trials Office in 2016.}

For over a decade, the Cancer Foundation has been one of the only organizations funding our local Clinical Trials Office here in Ottawa, making sure that patients at our local hospitals always have access to the latest and most promising treatments.

Since our donors and supporters are a HUGE part of supporting these exciting projects, today we are sharing more about the local Clinical Trials office and the new therapies they are bringing to families facing cancer here in Ottawa.

In the last 4 years alone, the local Clinical Trials Office has received 5 Investigational New Drug (IND) Awards from the Canadian Cancer Trial Group in recognition of their hard work. This demonstrates the team’s dedication to discovering and offering the best new treatments, and this is only the beginning of what they have been able to do for local patients!

15 First-in-Human Trials 

For the last 3 years, the Clinical Trials Office has helped open hundreds of trials for patients here in the Ottawa Region. 15 of these trials were first-in-human, meaning a promising new treatment was being used to treat cancer in a person for the very first time worldwide. You might think this sounds a little risky, but you can rest assured the treatments were studied extensively in the lab and in other mammal models first! A first in human trial is the first step towards extending and saving the lives of patients here in Ottawa with new treatments.

Leading Physicians

In the past 3 years, 6 studies were also opened here in Ottawa where a Phase 1 physician has been the trial’s global principal investigator. This says a lot about our community’s medical and research expertise, as it means a local clinician acted as the primary researcher responsible for conducting the clinical trial for 6 different studies, out of all other researchers conducting the same trials around the world.

Putting Ottawa on the Map

There have also been 6 studies in Ottawa during the last 3 years where the Ottawa trials office was the first site to open the trial globally. Being the first location in the world to open a trial can be a challenge, and demonstrates a high global respect for Ottawa’s doctors, researchers and clinicians. Thanks to our community’s support, Ottawa is leading the way in discovering and testing new treatments, and local patients are able to be the first to benefit!

How does a clinical trial help local families facing cancer?
Sometimes standard treatments like chemotherapy are not effective, or not a good fit for a patient. Clinical trials help patients have access to new treatment discoveries sooner, while also helping researchers improve them even more for future patients.

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