Clinical trials 'key to cancer results'

IRELAND NEEDS to keep building cancer clinical trials to offer patients the state of the art in cancer care.

That’s according to John Reynolds, professor of surgery at Trinity College Dublin, who will address a public symposium tomorrow as part of a major international cancer conference to celebrate the tercentenary of Trinity’s School of Medicine.

“The pace of development of new drugs, and introducing them into clinical trials has increased massively,” said Prof Reynolds. “And the modern patient is best served by being closely connected with clinical trials and at the interface with cancer research.”

Ireland has built up its capacity in cancer clinical trials over the last decade or so, mainly through the All Ireland Cooperative Oncology Research Group (Icorg), and that trend needs to continue, according to Prof Reynolds.

“Ultimately, the best results in cancer come from cancer care being delivered in the context of really well organised clinical trials.”

His own field of surgery has seen welcome changes in cancer care, said Prof Reynolds, who is involved in organising this week’s conference.

“Major cancer surgery for very complex cancer is massively safer than it was even 10-15 years ago in terms of risks of mortality following major surgery,” he said.

“And a lot of patients now, with cancer of the bowel in particular, can have their surgery done through keyhole surgery and minimally invasive approaches – the same cancer outcomes have been shown and yet recovery can be greater as they get back to work and quality of life.”

The staging of cancer has also seen enormous improvements, he added. “With the quality of Pet scans and MRI scans, it’s much less likely that a surgeon will go to operate on a patient expecting to do a very successful operation, but there was more to it than met the eye and sometimes an operation can’t be completed. That used to be common but it’s not any more because of the quality of modern technology with respect to scanning.”

The international conference State of the Art of Cancer Carehosted by Trinity College Dublin runs from tomorrow until Friday and opens with a free public symposium on Fighting Cancer Through Prevention, Early Diagnosis, and Improving Treatmentsorganised in association with the Irish Cancer Society, at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Pearse Street from 4.30pm to 9.30pm.

The public event will include talks on prevention, screening, radiation therapy, surgery and clinical trials, as well as a session on The Things We Don't Know About Cancer, where four patients will talk about their own journey with the disease.

See cancerconference.ie/index.php