RE:RE:Response on 1b pace. More clinics?I am sure with your knowledge and perseverance your wife is getting the absolute best care and options she can. Sincere hopes that the ones you've identified bring the results eveyone would want.
I am a friend-once-removed from one of the original Doctors that started Florida Cancer Specialists, one of the largest treatment and research groups throughout the state with 100 locations. He founded it with 2 other people back in the late 80's. It was a fairly small outfit and while they did well, it wasn't until the last 15 years or so when very, very expensive drugs came in to the mix that they literally started minting money. It became far more profitable than what any of them expected. The friend we have in common is an eye surgeon with a multi-office practice in the Carolinas. He's jealous of that model and hopes some day there are expensive drugs to administer for various eye diseases but there really aren't. It showed me what a difference between a specialty with loads of expensive drugs and one with just surgery and not many drugs --but the same effort! So you are right, the money is so large and thrown around that profits can certainly get in the way of advice for some doctors, but probably not all.
You're advice is right for THTX though -- open way more centers so you don't have the delays you had in dosage part of trial.
By the way, if THTX reads this, Florida Cancer Specialists is large in the drug trial space so if you need my contact, happy to provide it to you. He's a big wig down there..and, yes, I have provided him with the latest research paper that was published on TH1902. Still waiting for feedback. He's a busy man!
juniper88 wrote: We assume that doctors are good and honorable people. Having dealt with oncologist for just over 4 years now I now sadly know this assumption is far from the truth. My wife relapses and doesn't have many options. She was referred to a Phase I oncologist. He presented 1 trial as an options (his pet trial). I had done my homework and presented several. He said none of them were recruiting patients. So, I contacted the sponsors and yes they are still recruiting at the cancer center my wife is at. The doctors have all the power and the sponsors are deathly afraid of them, with good reason. So, my advice to THTX, open as many sites as you can.
Wino115 wrote: Responding to the question on how long a 1b could drag on, while I have no answer and everything seems to be longer, I do notice that it's about 50/50 between much larger 1a/1b number of study locations according to a sample from MD Anderson site and looking at their clinicalgov site. I'm counting "larger" as >10 study locations.
Some have a lot and they're small companies. Here's one for Five Prime Therapeutics and they have 18 sites, with some in Korea
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03514121
There's too many for me to really see what the averages are. I looked at just the docetaxol ones and you get guys like AbbVie with 35 locations around the world, all recruiting now. There's also a Pfizer one with 35 sites in US with about half recruiting.
I don't know their plans or what budget issues are, but I would hope they expand from the current 5 study sites, with only 4 recruiting. They probably need to double or triple the study sites for 1b, and then double again for 2 and beyond depending on the plan.
As pointed out, showing the clinics you have a highly interesting and potentially highly effective treatment would make that easy. If not, could be hard. Time is of the essence, so the more study sites, the quicker the data collection goes. Crank it up if you need to. That could be one of the major ATM functions -- expanding study sites.