New Complex Innovative Design (CID) trial recommendations have been published in the British Journal of Cancer, which if implemented could ultimately reduce the time it takes to get “innovative” treatments to patients with cancer.
As a result, the authors of the trial are calling on clinicians, funders, regulators and the pharmaceutical industry to get behind the ten recommendations and work together to rapidly implement them.
Each of the recommendations covers a specific stage of the clinical trial pathway, including trial planning and design, protocol development, patients and public involvement, patient-facing documentation among others.
The authors say that the suggestions could improve the conduct, quality and acceptability of oncology CID trials in clinical research, as well as improve how different stakeholders interact, promote and share their learnings from CID studies.
The CID approach enables researchers to carry out more complex trials, addressing multiple clinical questions at once. Unfortunately, they can be challenging to conduct and there are currently no practical guidelines for teams that fund, design and conduct such trials in Europe.
Researchers say that the recommendations could improve the conduct, quality and acceptability of oncology CID trials in clinical research, as well as improving how different stakeholders interact, promote and share their learnings from the studies.
Getting promising new cancer treatments to patients who need them the most “can take some time, so speeding up this process through Complex Innovative Design trials is a priority” said Nick Lemoine, medical director at the NIHR.
He continued to say, “With the expertise within the ECMC network and the new guidelines in place, the UK is now one of the best equipped countries to deliver these trials, which represent the future for evaluating new cancer drugs.”
CID trials are increasingly being used as an evaluation method by researchers, instead of traditional drug development pathways involving clinical trials from phases one to four.
