title: The future of clinical research in oncology: where are we heading to?
abstract: Despite considerable investment in oncological research, the rate of improvement in cancer treatments remains frustratingly slow and the attrition rate in anticancer drug development has reached exasperatingly high levels. New skills are required to expand upon platforms to integrate clinical, biological and imaging data in the decision making process so that we can control the attrition rate of new drugs and/or determine tumor molecular sub-entities which will ultimately benefit new therapeutic strategies. Furthermore, modern clinical trials will be unable to generate reliable and robust evidence if they are not quality assured. Decreasing the number of poorly designed clinical trials through stronger collaboration between industry and academia is a win-win situation and will reduce the current high attrition rate and minimize exposure of patients to ineffective investigational therapies.
authors.affiliation: The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium. denis.lacombe@eortc.be.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lacombe
authors.affiliation: The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
keywords: Attrition rate; biomarker; imaging; oncological research; quality control