Cancer Research

When you need treatment for your cancer, clinical trials may be an option for you. Choosing to join a clinical trial is something only you, those close to you, and your physicians can decide together.

Southern Oregon Cancer Research Institute (SOCRI) is a partnership between Asante and Providence Medford Medical Center.  SOCRI is staffed by oncology-certified clinical research registered nurses and is supported by local oncology physicians, Oregon Health & Science University Knight Cancer Institute, UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and the local health care community.

Southern Oregon Cancer Research Institute participates in national and regional partnerships to provide access to clinical trials to the people of Southern Oregon and Northern California.  Through these partnerships, SOCRI is able to offer patients participation in trials from the following National Cancer Institute (NCI) sponsored cooperative groups:

Southwest Oncology Group

Radiation Therapy Oncology Group

Studies are also available through the NCI’s Cancer Trials Support Unit from other NCI sponsored cooperative groups such as the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group.

If you are interested in learning more about research or participating in a research study, please talk with your doctor.

Your participation in a clinical trial may help to find a cure for cancer.

Understanding Clinical Trials

Clinical trials are part of clinical research and at the heart of all medical advances. Clinical trials look at new ways to prevent, detect, or treat disease.

Treatments might be new drugs or new combinations of drugs, new surgical procedures or devices, or new ways to use existing treatments.

The goal of clinical trials is to determine if a new test or treatment works and is safe. Clinical trials can also look at other aspects of care, such as improving the quality of life for people with chronic illnesses.

Every clinical trial has a protocol, or action plan, for conducting the trial. The plan describes what will be done in the study, how it will be conducted, and why each part of the study is necessary. Each study has its own rules about who can participate. Some studies need volunteers with a certain disease. Some need healthy people. Others want just men or just women.

People participate in clinical trials for a variety of reasons. Healthy volunteers say they participate to help others and to contribute to moving science forward. Participants with an illness or disease also participate to help others, but also to possibly receive the newest treatment and to have the additional care and attention from the clinical trial staff.

Clinical trials offer hope for many people and an opportunity to help researchers find better treatments for others in the future.

In the United States, an independent committee of physicians, statisticians and members of the community must approve and monitor the protocol. They make sure that the risks are small and are worth the potential benefits.

Content Adapted from National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute website - Last Reviewed 10/15/2001

Further Reading

http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov

http://www.nih.gov

http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/