What is a Clinical Trial?
Clinical trials—also known as clinical studies or research protocols—are controlled studies that evaluate new ways to treat, prevent, or diagnose cancer. These studies are made possible when patients volunteer to try new or modified treatments. The term “clinical trial” comes from the fact that such studies try new treatments in a hospital or clinical setting.
A clinical trial is an organized study in which one or more human subjects receive a new therapy (drug, device or intervention) in order to test the safety and effectiveness of that therapy. For more information, please refer to either the University of Pennsylvania’s Office of Human Research web site or the National Cancer Institute web site. Each has another list of frequently asked questions for patients who are considering participating in research.
Clinical trials, also called clinical research studies, are research studies involving people. Clinical trials try to answer specific scientific questions to find better ways to prevent, detect, or treat diseases or to improve care for people with diseases either by evaluating the effectiveness of a new treatment or a new way of using an old treatment.
