Today, ecancermedicalscience has published an editorial and an article highlighting some of the challenges, and solutions, for clinicians and researchers in rare cancers.

The article ‘International Clinical Trials Setting for Rare Cancers: Organizational and Regulatory Constraints – The EORTC perspective’ by Shash et al., highlights the many challenges clinicians and patients face, including diagnosis, treatment choice and the operation and low patient numbers for clinical trials. It argues that the development of an international platform such as the International Rare Cancer Initiative (IRCI),  ‘to facilitate the development of international clinical trials for patients with rare cancers in order to boost the progress of new treatments for these patients’ is an ideal solution to many of the challenges in rare cancer care and research.

The IRCI is a joint initiative between the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cancer Research Network (NCRN) and Cancer Research UK (CR‐UK) which was established in 2011 to organize international clinical trials. The editorial entitled ‘International Rare Cancers Initiative (IRCI)’ by Nicola Keat et al., provides an update on the progress of the IRCI, with a trial from the IRCI Gynaecological Sarcoma Group already open to patient recruitment.

The importance of international collaboration is highlighted in these two articles; the template established by the IRCI could be translated into other international initiatives on clinical trials. There are still many challenges associated with operating clinical trials internationally, in particular cost and country specific regulations, however the time and effort spent to overcome these issues is worth the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes.

You can read an interview with Dr Emad Shash here

References:

1. Shash E, Negrouk A, Marreaud S, Golfinopoulos V, Lacombe D, Meunier F (2013) International Clinical Trials Setting for Rare Cancers: Organizational and Regulatory Constraints—The EORTC Perspective ecancer 7 321.

2. Keat N, Law K, McConnell A, Seymour M, Welch J, Trimble T, Lacombe D, Negrouk A (2013) International Rare Cancers Initiative ecancer.