Ongoing Challenges With Trials in the Community Oncology Setting

Benjamin Garmezy, MD, medical oncologist assistant director, Genitourinary Research, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, Tennessee Oncology, discusses some of the ongoing challenges or disparities seen in the community oncologist setting related to clinical trials.

At the 2023 IKCS Annual Meeting, Garmezy discussed the need to increase diversity and equity in clinical trials. This includes trials assessing patients with renal cell carcinoma as studies have shown that patient sociodemographic factors remain associated with clinical trial participation and different survival rates among patients with varying ages, clinical stages, and comorbidities, and more.

According to Garmezy, work from the FDA and other regulatory agencies are needed to make adjustments to clinical trial protocols and better the outcomes of patients with cancer moving forward.

Transcription:

0:09 | think the big challenge on everyone's mind is how do we increase diversity and equity in our trials? A lot of these patients in the community, we have these patients, but are we able to keep them in the clinic for 8 hours to meet certain requirements on a protocol, a lot of the times we go and we have these great conversations, and very often it's hard to change things. We have to understand that certain populations are enriched for certain types of careers and certain types of requirements, maybe people working multiple jobs, we need to find a way to give these novel therapies to these patients. It's going to take a lot of challenges. It's not going to just take work with our pharma biotech colleagues when we write these protocols with them.

0:51 | It's also going to take work with the FDA and some of these governmental agencies on what wiggle room can we have in these protocols that are so rigid, so that we can work around somebody who is working or that we can work around a parent taking care of their kids? How can we get them into the clinic and have the adjustments needed to actually help serve these patients better? I think we can do it, I think it's going to take much more effort than we're currently putting in. I'm excited about the future because I know everyone's aligned in their goals. We all want the same thing. We just have to slowly turn it into action. It's going to take time, but we have the ability to do that.