Dr. Nguyen on Enrollment Disparities in Pivotal Clinical Trials in Oncology

Ryan Nguyen, DO, chief fellow, Hematology and Oncology, University of Illinois Cancer Center, discusses enrollment disparities in pivotal clinical trials in oncology.

Findings from an e-poster that was part of the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting revealed several disparities in patient enrollment to pivotal clinical trials in oncology between 2008 and 2020.

Across all tumor types, Black patients were less than one-third as likely to be enrolled in a clinical trial compared with White patients, says Nguyen. Hispanic patients were less than half as likely to be enrolled compared with White patients. Additionally, in colorectal cancer and lung cancer clinical trials, females were less likely to enroll compared with males, Nguyen explains.

Notably, although elderly patients comprise a significant proportion of the cancer population in the United States, older individuals were underrepresented across clinical trials compared with younger patients, Nguyen states. As such, findings from clinical trials that lead to FDA approvals of widely utilized therapeutic agents may not be generalizable to the overall oncology population, concludes Nguyen.