10 Apr Early phase clinical trials provide cutting-edge treatment options to cancer patients
Dr. Vincent Ma, a skin cancer medical oncologist, provides immunotherapy expertise as part of Carbone’s Early Phase Oncology Therapeutics clinical research team.
Early phase clinical trials play a crucial role in developing new cancer treatments, creating the bridge that takes promising lab discoveries into human study.
Phase I trials, the earliest stage of clinical studies, have historically been used to evaluate safe dosages of new treatment, such as chemotherapy or radiation. Later phases of clinical trials would evaluate how effective those approaches are in treating cancer.
While chemotherapy has historically been the main type of drug used to treat cancer, most newer treatments being developed are much more precise. These new approaches include developing treatments that can empower a patient’s immune system to fight cancer, as well as treatments that target a specific feature of cancer for a precision attack.
“Two or three decades ago, we were not expecting to see much (treatment) activity in phase I trials, but this has changed in the last decade,” said Dr. Nataliya Uboha, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist who leads the UW Health | Carbone Cancer Center Early Phase Oncology Therapeutics team.
“We have actually seen approvals by the FDA based on the results of phase I studies. We actually see people who are treated on phase I studies for several years, which was unheard of in the past (compared to history), and this means that the new therapies are working for them.”
Carbone Cancer Center’s Early Phase Oncology Therapeutics team oversees this emerging treatment research with a diverse team approach. While other research teams at Carbone are focused on one type of cancer, Early Phase Oncology Therapeutics’ work spans all cancers and relies on close collaboration among researchers from a wide range of specialty fields.
Within this team, Dr. Vincent Ma, a melanoma/skin cancer medical oncologist, provides expertise in immunotherapy. Dr. Zhubin Gahvari, a hematologist, is experienced in immune cell therapies and stem cell transplant care. Dr. Jeremy Kratz, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist, specializes in research on genetic and molecular features of cancer to develop targeted treatment approaches.