How to train oncologists and researchers in clinical trial design in 6 days

Neil Ranasinghe, Lead Technical Author at London Stock Exchange, recently attended CReDO Workshop 2025 which took place at Mumbai, India:

“I have just come back from an inspiring, fascinating, fun, rewarding, intense, exhausting (I could use many more superlatives here) week in India. I was part of faculty for the Collaboration for Research methods Development in Oncology (CReDO) workshop, this is an annual workshop to help people develop protocols for oncology clinical trials.

What is CReDO?

The CReDO workshop is a six-day residential workshop on clinical research protocol development organized by the National Cancer Grid of India, held just outside Mumbai. CReDO is primarily designed to help develop clinical research in cancer in low- and middle-income countries, which is where the cancer burden is growing. CReDO is modelled on programmes for high income countries that have been running in Europe and United States.

The objectives of this workshop are –

• to train researchers in oncology in various aspects of clinical trial design
•  to help them to develop a research idea into a structured protocol
•  to develop research capacity by training biostatisticians
• leave with a nearly completed protocol ready for submission.

This is for researchers or clinicians with training in surgical, medical or radiation oncology or any branch related to oncology.

Pramesh showing the transformational work that the National Cancer Grid is doing to help so many adults and children with cancer.

The workshop has a wide range of activities –

• pre-workshop webinars
• protocol development group sessions
• didactic talks
• small-group breakaway sessions
• Meet the experts (one-to-one direct consultation with experts)
• “homework” – there was a lot of this, and it had to be handed in by 9pm every day

The faculty includes experts from all over the world with extensive experience in oncology research and training in research methodology workshops, with a mix of clinician-researchers, trialists and statisticians.

The attendees come to CReDO with their own one-page research concept and by the end of the workshop, the researchers have converted it into a full-fledged research protocol, ready for submission to the Ethics Committee.

There was an emphasis on pragmatic approaches to research, that includes simple but impactful endpoints and the minimization of data to be collected. This approach is particularly important in low resource settings.

Many of the protocols are important locally, but will have global impact. Some of the topics covered during the workshop included study designs, the drug development process, biomarker research, protocol writing, ethics in research, biostatistics and issues specific to cancer research.

Attendees signing up to Meet the experts

The help CReDO (with the support of National Cancer Grid) is providing to clinicians and researchers in India and many other countries is incredible. This year there were 77 attendees, with about half from India and half from all over the globe including Nepal, Australia, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Peru, Egypt, Philippines, Jordan.

Why me?

I wore multiple hats at this workshop. One was to help with the training of patient advocates. In addition to the 77 attendees being guided with their protocols, there was a team of patient advocates that were going through training. Patient advocacy is in its infancy in India, but after seeing the quality of the team, I was blown away. I have nearly 18 years of experience advocating for patients and their families, but this team were showing me how to do things after just minimal training. I was also there to help ensure that patients were considered by all attendees when designing their protocols. I was also there to help the attendees develop their protocols. My input was from a parent/patient perspective, this included changing the title to make it more accessible, checking the research would benefit patients, ensuring the correct questions were being asked in any surveys, helping ensure there weren’t any unnecessary hospital visits or tests.

How did attendees develop their protocols?

In daily two- to three-hour small mentoring groups, faculty guided attendees in the
following areas –

• Is it asking the right research question?
• Are the correct methods being proposed?
• Have patients been consulted?
• Is it likely to succeed?
• is it ethical?
• Has it already been done?
• What phase trial is appropriate?
• What type of data needs to be collected?

I have never seen groups of people being given hour upon hour with world leading experts to structure, restructure, form their protocols. Seeing the collaboration and knowledge grow during the week was really inspiring. The mentees often witnessed healthy debates among the faculty about research design. This enlightened all of the participants that there are always different approaches to solving problems or researching. The mentees learned how to adapt their proposals and adopt new approaches.

Daily protocol development session

Show time

At the end of the week each attendee had to do a three slide, three minute presentation. And from each of the 8 or 9 groups, one protocol was selected for final presentation to the whole audience of CReDO. In our particular group all of the mentees gathered together to help our group’s “winner” present her talk. It was a sublime message of the success of team building.

As part of my role, I helped people with their presentations. To say they were fast learners is an understatement.

I gave a presentation too. My audience did not include anyone whose presentation I critiqued, so they could not see whether I took my own presentation advice.

• Did I use a big font?
• Did I include a complicated diagram?
• Did I speak slowly?

Those whose presentations I critiqued will never know…

And the gold medal goes to … team CReDO

It isn’t all hard work, although it very nearly is. All the attendees are working to the clock to submit “homework” to faculty every day.
There was a brutal but brilliant boot camp at 6.30am every day. This was well attended and was a great way to get the day started, motivate everyone, and see the sun come up.

Additionally, there were daily yoga sessions at 6.15am. I switched from boot camp to yoga after pulling a muscle, but where else should I have my first ever yoga sessions than India?

There was also a very competitive team building exercise. There was a lot of debate about which team was the rightful winner. I took the mature approach and didn’t mention the result after the night as that would have been childish.

Gold medal and my team lanyard

Icing on the cake

This isn’t just a fun week and afterwards everyone goes back home and carries on doing the same as before. The number of people who implement their protocols is very high, exceptionally high – around 65%, but even for those who can’t implement their protocol, they have learnt so much and become part of a community.

Me enjoying a chocolate cupcake back in Mumbai

How do I find out more about CReDO?

Look out for a forthcoming interview with Dr Priya Ranganathan, one of the founders and organisers of CReDO, where we discuss how CReDO came about, how it was implemented and how it is expanding and improving every year.

Go to https://credo.ncgindia.org for more information about CReDO.

If you are interested in attending CReDO then apply here.

Thank you

I would like to give a huge thank-you to the many people that made CReDO happen, there are too many to mention here, and a big thank you to the sponsors of the event. You can look forward to hearing more about these people and organisations in
my interview with Priya.

Thank you to Julie Waxgiser for the usual high quality edits and suggestions, Simon Jones for helping me with my presentation, Professor Pat Loehrer for reviewing this text, and Professor Michael Brada for suggesting a critical change.”

More posts featuring Neil Ranasinghe.