A Close Look at Clinical Trials in Oncology and Beyond: Incorporating Into Standard Care

In this episode of OncChats: A Close Look at Clinical Trials in Oncology and Beyond, Christina Brennan, MD, MBA, FACRP; and Richard D. Carvajal, MD, of Northwell Health and Northwell’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, discuss the importance of integrating clinical trials as a standard of care, emphasizing education for healthcare providers and patients to view them as a viable treatment option rather than a last resort, particularly in the realm of oncology.

Brennan: Good afternoon, Dr Carvajal. I’m glad that the two of us are getting together today to talk about clinical trials—not only clinical trials at Northwell, but the state of clinical trials across our industry. Just so the audience is aware, why don’t you introduce yourself, as you’re fairly new still to Northwell.

Carvajal: Thank you, Dr Brennan, and I’m thrilled to be speaking about this topic. My name is Richard Carvajal; I’m a medical oncologist. I have the role of deputy physician-in-chief, here, at the Northwell Health Cancer Institute, so I oversee hematology and oncology. A large part of why I came here was because of what we are able to deliver to our patients across Northwell and beyond in terms of novel therapies on clinical trials. Something that I always say is—and this is true for all of medicine, but I think particularly true for cancer—clinical trials, although we consider this research, is really part of standard of care. Access to these new treatments is what we have to provide all our patients with cancer until we’re curing everybody. We have to do this and push the envelope.

Brennan: Agreed. And my name is Dr Christina Brennan. I have been at Northwell for 24 years. I’m the senior vice president for our Clinical Research Program. [I oversee] general research, and then, as you mentioned, yourself and our vice president Erica Love, oversee the oncology side. I think we’ll get right into it. I like that you brought up looking at clinical research more as standard of care. I’m not sure if you’ve heard throughout the industry, but there’s been a movement called CRAACO, or clinical research as a care option. I want to talk about that for a moment, because I think it’s so important. I still see [this with] many of our providers, and then patients [also] believe this, that clinical trials become almost thought of as a last resort. How do you think that we can really incorporate more clinical trials within clinical care?

Carvajal: Yeah, so that’s a wonderful question. Obviously, you would need a multipronged approach to really do this. I think the foundation of solving that issue is really a matter of education. This is education for our faculty, our team members, and the patients and family, that this is really an expectation. Again, I’ll just bring it back to the cancer space. What I always tell my patients is that the clinical trial options, or “investigational” options, should be a part of every single decision-making discussion. That is, you want to know what is standard of care or currently available today, and what are the questions that we’re trying to answer on clinical trials? In the best of all worlds, what we’d be able to do is treat our patients today with the treatments of the future, which presumably are going to be better.

Check back for the next episode, which will air tomorrow at 1 pm.