NCI Director Norman Sharpless, M.D., describes some of the COVID-19 specific research activities NCI has initiated and talks about the effect the coronavirus pandemic is having on cancer clinical trials.
NCI is developing the capability to produce cellular therapies, like CAR T cells, to be tested in cancer clinical trials at multiple hospital sites. Few laboratories and centers have the ability to make CAR T cells, and that has limited the ability to test them more broadly.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved selumetinib (Koselugo) to treat children with neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1), a genetic disorder that causes tumors to form throughout the nervous system. The approval was based on findings from a phase 2 clinical trial spearheaded by NCI’s Pediatric Oncology Branch.
More than a decade after vaccination, women who had received a single dose of a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine continued to be protected against infection with HPV16 and 18, the two cancer-causing HPV types targeted by the vaccine. The new findings are from an extended follow-up of the NCI-sponsored Costa Rica HPV Vaccine Trial.
Women with cervical or uterine cancer who received radiation to the pelvic region reported side effects much more often using an online reporting system called PRO-CTCAE than they did during conversations with their clinicians, a new study shows.
Clinical Trials Information for Patients and Caregivers
In the NCI-MATCH precision medicine trial, doctors examine tumor tissue from patients with advanced solid tumors, lymphomas, or myelomas that have stopped responding to treatment and assign patients to treatment based on the molecular profiles of their disease.
In this precision medicine clinical trial, children and adolescents with advanced cancers whose tumors have certain genetic mutations are being treated with drugs designed to target those mutations.
This phase 2 trial is testing the immunotherapy drug nivolumab (Opdivo) in people with rare tumors of the central nervous system that have not responded to or relapsed after standard treatment. Doctors want to see if stimulating the immune system with nivolumab will cause these tumors to shrink or stop them from growing.
This phase 2 trial studies how well smoking cessation treatment plans work for tobacco-dependent cancer patients when delivered virtually as part of their cancer care in community oncology practices. Researchers want to see if virtual information and counseling sessions can help people with cancer quit smoking.
