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Mesothelioma Clinical Trial: Drugs
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This is a Phase III clinical trial where a new drug, ONCONASE, is being tested in combination with Doxorubicin for the treatment of malignant mesothelioma. Doxorubicin is an older cancer drug that is considered an antibiotic and directly damages DNA cells through free radical damage.
When a treatment is shown to be more effective and/or safer than the current standard treatment in a phase III clinical trial, it is submitted for approval to the FDA. Based on the results of the clinical trials, the FDA decides whether or not it is appropriate for use in the general public. When this happens, the treatment often becomes the new standard of care, and newer drugs must be tested against it before being approved.
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Due to the poor effectiveness of single chemotherapy agents for the treatment of mesothelioma, most ongoing clinical trials are now evaluating combination treatments. The following are typical principles that are used when selecting combinations of drugs to test in clinical trials for the treatment of mesothelioma.
Many drugs and treatments fail in clinical trials studies, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the side effects found during clinical trials are too drastic, other times not enough people respond to the treatment, or at rare times there may be a legal issue with the rights to produce the drug. Failure rates rarely discourage large pharmaceutical or medical companies, for they know if one treatment fails perhaps the next two will help recover any losses, and any success ultimately saves lives.
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Even among clinical trials that do study treatments, not all of them study drugs. Many clinical trials test other forms of treatment, such as new surgery or radiation therapy techniques, or sometimes even complementary or alternative medicines.
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Non-drug related clinical trials are much the same as drug clinical trials with the exception that they do not always require FDA approval. Whereas drug clinical trials consist of four phases, non-drug related clinical trials typically consist of three.
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