Learn about clinical trials

What are clinical trials?

Clinical trials test treatments and ways of caring for people to make sure they are safe and work well. They help us to improve your care at UCLH.

Why are they important?

Clinical trials help researchers answer key questions about new treatments and approaches. They show whether something:

• is safe

• has side effects and, if so, what they are
• works better than current options
• helps people feel better and improves quality of life.

Types of clinical trials

Clinical trials can focus on:

• Screening – finding cancer earlier
• Diagnosis – investigating new scans or tests
• Treatment – testing treatments such as new medicines, ways of delivering radiotherapy or new surgical techniques
• Managing symptoms – finding out if medicines or complementary therapies can reduce effects
• Genetics – understanding how genes affect cancer and treatment.

There’s more information about clinical trials on the Cancer Research UK website.

Phases of clinical trials

There are generally four phases of trials (phase I, II, III and IV). Each phase builds on the one before to make sure whatever is being tested is safe and effective before it become widely available. You can find out more about phases of clinical trials on the Cancer Research UK website.

Randomised controlled trial (RCT)

This is a fair way to test new treatments. People are randomly chosen by a computer to get either the new treatment or the best current one, so researchers can compare results and see which works better. There is more information about RCTs on the cancer research UK website.