Clinical trials

Your doctor may ask you whether you would like to take part in a clinical trial. This is a research study conducted with patients in order to (ClinicalTrials.gov, 2017):

• Test new treatments • Look at new combinations of existing treatments, or change the way they are given to make them more effective or reduce side effects • Compare the effectiveness of drugs used to control symptoms • Find out how cancer treatments work. Clinical trials help to improve knowledge about cancer and develop new treatments, and there can be many benefits to taking part. You would be carefully monitored during and after the study, and the new treatment may offer benefits over existing therapies. It’s important to bear in mind, however, that some new treatments are found not to be as good as existing treatments or to have side effects that outweigh the benefits (ClinicalTrials.gov, 2017).

Clinical trials help to improve knowledge about diseases and develop new treatments – there can be many benefits to taking part

Several new drugs for the treatment of NSCLC are being studied in clinical trials, including targeted therapies and immunotherapy agents.

Lorlatinib is a targeted therapy that has recently been approved in Europe for the treatment of ALK-positive metastatic NSCLC following treatment with one or more ALK inhibitors (EMA, 2019a). Another targeted therapy, dacomitinib, is newly approved for the first-line treatment of locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC with EGFR-activating mutations (EMA, 2019b).

Clinical trials have also investigated different combinations of existing drugs; for example, while atezolizumab is currently used for the second-line treatment of NSCLC, it has recently shown promise as first-line treatment of metastatic non-squamous NSCLC in combination with chemotherapy (Cappuzzo et al., 2018) and bevacizumab plus chemotherapy (Socinski et al., 2018a) and in squamous NSCLC in combination with chemotherapy (Socinski et al., 2018b). Erlotinib has also shown promise as neoadjuvant treatment in locally advanced EGFR-mutated NSCLC (Zhong et al., 2018).

You have the right to accept or refuse participation in a clinical trial without any consequences for the quality of your treatment. If your doctor does not ask you about taking part in a clinical trial and you want to find out more about this option, you can ask your doctor if there is a trial for your type of cancer taking place nearby (ClinicalTrials.gov, 2017).