Medical World News® Inside the Practice: CancerNetwork® With Anthony W. Tolcher, MD, and Alexander I. Spira, MD, PhD, on Expand Access to Phase 1 Cancer Trials

For the latest installment of the Inside the Practice Segment of the Medical World News® broadcast, CancerNetwork® spoke with Anthony W. Tolcher, MD, co-founder of NEXT Oncology and a medical oncologist at Texas Oncology, as well as Alexander I. Spira, MD, PhD, director of Virginia Cancer Specialists Research Institute and the Phase I Trial Program, to discuss their new partnership and how this can positively affect patients who have run out of treatment options.

The aim of the partnership with NEXT and Phase 1 program was to make treatment more accessible in the community setting. As both programs were looking to expand, investigators from both organizations realized they needed more technology and accessibility to be successful.

Tolcher spoke about the importance of this partnership, stating how grateful patients are to have another chance at trying different treatment when others didn’t work. He also spoke about altruistic patients who want to receive treatment on clinical trial in the hopes that it could help others in the future. Tolcher continued stating how important it is that patients participate in trials in order to receive the best care possible and to help clinicians find the right treatment combinations.

Spira discussed how exciting it is to be partnering with NEXT Oncology in the hopes of expanding to more institutions around the country and around the world. Currently, he said they are working with clinicians in Spain to build a similar program. He mentions that the partnership will allow the Phase 1 program access to more clinical trials and in turn allow more of an opportunity to help patients.

This segment comes from the CancerNetwork® portion of the MJH Life Sciences™ Medical World News®, airing daily on all MJH Life Sciences™ channels.