Clinical Trials Close to Home
Huntington Cancer Center offers adult breast cancer patients significant opportunities to participate in promising new clinical trials that may reduce their risk for cancer – or improve their prognosis once cancer has been diagnosed.
“It is in large part due to past trials that prevention and treatment mechanisms have improved so greatly over recent years.”
– Ruth Williamson, MD
Clinical trials are designed to test the benefits of possible new treatments or diagnostic procedures. Large, randomized trials are widely recognized as the best means for testing new methodologies.
Patients taking part in a clinical trial not only have the potential to benefit themselves, they are also advancing research in ways that may help thousands of future patients.
Types of Clinical Trials
- Phase 1 trials study whether a new treatment is safe over a range of doses, and may include patients with a wide variety of cancers.
- Phase 2 trials evaluate how well a treatment works in a particular cancer.
- Phase 3 trials study how well a treatment works compared to other, usually standard, treatments. In Phase 3 trials, patients are selected at random to receive either the experimental or the standard treatment. They may not choose which treatment they will receive.
Current Trials Open to Enrollment
Does Insurance Cover the Cost of Clinical Trials?
While insurance payments may not cover all costs associated with
an experimental treatment, most insurance companies will cover the portion of
care deemed standard and non-experimental. Many pharmaceutical tests provide
the drugs under investigation at no cost to the patient.
Medi-Cal patients: please note this reimbursement mechanism does not cover costs
associated with Phase I trials.