Research – clinical trials

• See current gullet cancer trials

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

When a new treatment is being developed, it goes through various stages of research. To begin with, it will be looked at in the laboratory, and sometimes tested on cancer cells in a test tube. If the treatment seems as though it might be useful in treating cancer, it is then given to patients in research studies (clinical trials).

These early trials are called phase 1 trials. They aim to:

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

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

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

Clinical trials take a long time. 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 research trial. There can be many benefits in doing this. You will be helping to improve knowledge about cancer and the development of new treatments. You will also be carefully monitored during and after the study.

It is important to bear in mind that some new treatments that look promising at first, are often found not to be as good as existing treatments, or to have side effects that outweigh any benefits.

Clinical trials are described in detail in our section on cancer research trials.

As part of research you may be asked by your doctors for 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.