LaCasce Discusses the Potential Impact of Drug Shortages on Clinical Trials

Ann LaCasce, MD, MMSc, associate professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, director of the Dana Farber/Mass General Brigham Fellowship in Hematology/Oncology, discusses the effects that chemotherapy drug shortages may have on clinical trials and patient accrual.

If a specific drug called for in clinical trial protocol isn’t available, the design of the trial may need to be altered by using an alternative treatment or patient enrollment may need to be delayed. Either way, these changes can lead to a significant impact on the study results and alter the validity of the findings.

Additionally, LaCasce emphasizes that patients may lose trust in their team if they aren’t able to get the standard of care, which can also impact clinical trial accrual down the line.

Ultimately, communication and collaboration among medical institutions is important in order to effectively combat these challenges and medical teams, like those at Dana-Farber, are continuously working to provide the best possible care for their patients, despite the scarcity of these chemotherapy drugs.

Transcription:

0:10 | I think some of the clinical trials incorporate these drugs, so adding novel agents to the standard chemotherapy drugs is something we do all the time. That may be a direct effect. And then again, if patients are not having good outcomes up front, and God forbid, say they survived less long because they weren't able to get the standard of care, then that's going to impact accruel to clinical trials down the line potentially. I think that's probably an overstatement, but I think also patients just lose trust in their team if you can't get them the drug. They don't understand and it's a complicated discussion, but they don't necessarily understand that our hands are a bit tied. But we've been very fortunate here [at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute], but it's just such an important issue.