Dr Howard Burris Discusses the Role of Clinical Trials in Maintaining Progress in Cancer Care

Encouraging clinical trial participation is the only way we’ll get the answers to the questions we need for future generations, explained Howard A. "Skip" Burris, III, MD, FACP, FASCO, president, clinical operations, and chief medical officer of Sarah Cannon Research Institute.

Transcript

When looking at the progress made in cancer care, how important is it to recognize the role of clinical trials?

I think the future has never been brighter. The idea of improved outcomes, it’s easy to talk about the very good success stories that have come out. But the fact remains, it’s not true for the majority of patients, which is a sad thing to say with all of the promising new developments. There’s hundreds, if not thousands, of new therapies in development, there are numerous new avenues to approaching immunotherapy, so the thought I’d like to leave with is every one of these therapies has been able to benefit tens of thousands of patients because patients participated in the clinical trials and physicians enrolled them. These patients are truly volunteers. Physicians being aware and encouraging clinical trial participation, it’s really the only way we’ll get the answers to the questions we need for future generations.