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International Clinical Trials Day – Increasing Cancer Clinical Trial Capacity in Wales

Every year on 20th May, the global clinical research community comes together to celebrate International Clinical Trials Day. This date marks the anniversary of the first ever randomised clinical trial, designed and conducted by Royal Navy surgeon James Lind in 1747, who investigated treatments for scurvy in British sailors.

International Clinical Trials Day represents an opportunity to raise awareness of this important area of medicine and to honour the clinical researchers and patient participants across the globe who work to deliver these life-saving studies.

The theme for this year is Decentralised Clinical Trials: Challenges and Opportunities.

The theme is very timely as the Wales Cancer Network has recently held a cancer clinical trials day and in this blog we will look at some of the challenges and opportunities highlighted at that event.

The Covid-19 pandemic caused great disruption to cancer pathways across Wales, which virtually stopped new cancer clinical trials being opened and severely affected patient recruitment for ongoing trials. While cancer clinical trials have now reopened, patient recruitment continues to remain slow, with the numbers of patients enrolling still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels. This situation is replicated across much of the UK and there is significant work to be done to make Wales (and the wider UK) the centre of excellence for clinical trials that it should be.