Adding the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to chemotherapy can help some people with advanced triple-negative breast cancer live longer. In the KEYNOTE-355 trial, overall survival improved among those whose tumors had high levels of the PD-L1 protein.
A randomized clinical trial has shown that regular visits and calls from community health workers led to many benefits for those with advanced cancers. Benefits included greater use of palliative care and improved quality of life.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the combination of the targeted drugs dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) for nearly any type of advanced solid tumor with a specific mutation in the BRAF gene. Data from the NCI-MATCH trial, as well as two other trials, informed the approval.
Clinical Trials Information for Patients and Caregivers
Patient safety is vital to conducting any clinical trial. This page discusses some of the ways that people who take part in clinical trials are protected.
Informed consent is a process through which potential clinical trial participants learn details about the trial before deciding whether to take part. Learn more about this critical part of ensuring patient safety in research.
Children are not legally able to give informed consent until they turn 18. Before taking part in a clinical trial, they are asked for their assent, which means that they agree to take part. Learn more about children’s assent to participate in clinical trials.
This phase 1 trial will test an immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment, either nivolumab (Opdivo) or pembrolizumab (Keytruda), given at different dosing intervals for people with advanced or metastatic cancers. Doctors want to determine if giving the drugs at longer intervals between doses works differently than giving them at the standard intervals.
This phase 1 trial will test the safety of adding the immunotoxin moxetumomab pasudotox (Lumoxiti) to rituximab (Rituxan) for people with relapsed hairy cell leukemia (HCL). Moxetumomab pasudotox is FDA approved for relapsed HCL. And rituximab is commonly used to treat the disease. Researchers want to see if combining the drugs can fight HCL better.
This phase 1 trial will study the dosing and safety of a combination of four drugs in people with T-cell cancers that have either come back after or got worse during previous treatment. NCI researchers will determine a safe dose of the four-drug combination and assess the safety of the drugs when given together. Researchers will also see if this treatment causes tumors to shrink.
