Research – Clinical trials

• See current skin cancer trials

Research into new ways of treating skin cancer is going on all the time.

When a new treatment is being developed, it goes through various stages of research. First it will be looked at in the laboratory, and sometimes tested on cancer cells in a test tube. If the treatment seems it might be useful in treating cancer, it is given to patients in research studies (clinical trials). As a first step, these aim to:

• find a safe dose
• see what side effects the therapy may cause
• identify which cancers it might be used to treat.

These early studies are known as phase 1 trials.

If early studies suggest that a new treatment may be both safe and effective, further trials (phases 2 and 3) are done to answer these questions:

• Is it better than existing treatments?
• Does it have an extra benefit when given together with existing treatments?
• How does it compare with the current best standard treatments?

Clinical trials are very necessary for working out how useful any possible new treatment might be. Because this must be done carefully and thoroughly, it usually takes some years from the time when a new treatment is first discovered (often with a lot of publicity in the papers and on TV) until the time when its true value is established.

You may be asked to take part in a trial. There can be many benefits in doing this. You will be helping to improve knowledge about cancer and the development of new treatments and you will be carefully monitored during and after the study.

It is important to remember that some treatments that look good at first are often later found not to be as good as existing treatments, or to have side effects that outweigh any benefits.

As part of research your doctors may ask your permission to store some of the samples of your tumour or blood, so that they can be used as part of trials to find the causes of cancer. 

CancerBACUP can give you further information about trials into treatments for skin cancer.