Clinical trials are often the best option in Oncology

People frequently wonder about the safety of participating in a clinical trial, but for cancer patients, this option is often the best choice available. Dr. Fernando Rivera, Head of Medical Oncology at Valdecilla Hospital (Santander, Spain), explains it this way:

“Clinical trials are not only valuable for society—being the only way to advance cancer treatments and translate basic scientific discoveries into real benefits for patients—but they also directly benefit the participants. Patients in clinical trials gain access to cutting-edge treatments long before they become widely available outside the trial setting.”
 
“It’s important to understand that developing a new cancer drug is a lengthy process. From the initial laboratory studies to the first use in patients within a clinical trial, it typically takes 3 to 5 years. Then, from the start of clinical trials through all development phases (I, II, and III) until the drug is approved for routine use, another 5 to 10 years may pass.”
 
“During those years when the drug is still under investigation, the only way to access it is through a clinical trial. In many cases, this represents the best therapeutic option we can offer patients.”
 
Source: Statements by Dr. Fernando Rivera to the Cantabria College of Physicians
 

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What is "Proton therapy"?

“Proton therapy is a less invasive and therefore less toxic form of radiotherapy, making it the best therapeutic option for certain cancers—though not many. It’s an exciting tool to incorporate, but we shouldn’t overstate its value. It will be a critical treatment for a small group of patients, yet it won’t significantly increase overall cancer cure rates. It’s simply one more therapeutic option—not the only one, nor the most important.”

“We must provide comprehensive care that balances all available treatment options. It’s not enough to excel in some areas while neglecting others. This means ensuring proper anatomical-pathological and molecular diagnostics, adequate radiology, a robust nuclear medicine service, reliable clinical analysis, strong surgical treatments, and effective drug-based therapies.”

“Currently, in Cantabria, 3,800 patients are diagnosed with cancer each year. Of these, 2,000 are treated at the Medical Oncology Service of Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital, where antitumor drug treatments play a vital role in their survival and quality of life. It’s clear that if we have proton therapy but lack a strong oncology service, we’d be offering an imbalanced treatment approach.”

Source: Statements by Dr. Fernando Rivera to the Cantabria College of Physicians

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...
“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca” (Vicente Fisac, Amazon) is available in e-Book and print editions: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI

The future of immunotherapy in oncology is vast

“Immunotherapy is highly promising, but its development wasn’t easy—immunity is incredibly complex. The first breakthroughs came with drugs that regulate the immune response, specifically immune checkpoint inhibitors. The immune system is finely tuned to attack tumor cells while sparing healthy ones. When a tumor progresses, it’s because it has evaded this immune control.”

“With immunotherapy, we enhance the patient’s immune system to reject and destroy cancer cells. The introduction of these initial immunotherapeutic drugs has led to remarkable progress for certain tumor types. For example, in advanced melanomas with widespread metastases—including to the brain—immunotherapy has achieved long-term survival rates exceeding 60 percent. Before its arrival, it was rare for these patients to survive beyond a year.”

“However, the effectiveness of current immunotherapy varies widely depending on the tumor type. It works exceptionally well for cancers like melanoma or tumors with ‘microsatellite instability’ (a molecular trait found in a small percentage of tumors across various sites). In other cancers—such as lung, esophagogastric, head and neck, urological, or some breast cancers—immunotherapy has brought progress, but the gains are more modest or limited to specific patient subgroups. Meanwhile, cancers like prostate, pancreatic, or colorectal cancer without microsatellite instability remain largely unresponsive to today’s immunotherapy.”

“The good news is that the potential of antitumor immunotherapy is enormous, and current treatments tap into only a fraction of it. There’s still much room for advancement. Right now, over 1,000 clinical trials worldwide are exploring new, more effective immunotherapy approaches that could target a broader range of tumors.”

Source: Statements by Dr. Fernando Rivera to the Cantabria College of Physicians

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...
“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca” (Vicente Fisac, Amazon) is available in e-Book and print editions: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI