Yelak Biru: Practical Guide to Clinical Trial Accessibility – Making Trial Participation a Standard of Care
Yelak Biru, President and Chief Executive Officer at International Myeloma Foundation, shared a post on X:
“Leading to ASCO2025, our educational ebook is out: “Practical Guide to Clinical Trial Accessibility: Making Trial Participation a Standard of Care”
Proud to be a co-author of this multi-stakeholder perspective on reducing barriers to trial participation.
Clinical trials are essential to advancing cancer care, but they remain inaccessible to too many. We convened advocates, community oncologists, academics and industry leaders to outline practical, collaborative solutions.
Patient Advocacy Perspective:
- Language and literacy barriers
- Financial toxicity (travel, time off, childcare)
- Historical mistrust
- Lack of patient involvement in trial design
Solutions: multilingual tools, financial support, and co-design with patients.
Community Oncology Perspective:
- Most cancer patients are treated outside academic centers
- Community sites face staffing, funding and trial infrastructure challenges
- Need pragmatic, scalable trial designs
Industry Perspective:
- Overly narrow eligibility criteria limit diversity
- Conservative protocols can exclude real-world patients
Action: Portfolio-wide tools like protocol “watch lists” help build more inclusive trials from day one.
Academic Oncologist Perspective: Trial designs are often complex and resource-intensive.
Eligibility criteria still exclude HIV+, elderly, and patients with brain mets. Pragmatic and decentralized designs (e.g. Project Pragmatica) show what’s possible. Partnerships and shared research networks are key.
Across all stakeholders, common solutions emerged:
- Broaden eligibility.
- Decentralize access.
- Engage patient voices early.
- Align trials with real-world care delivery.
- Strengthen community-academic-industry partnerships.
It was a pleasure to co-author this work with such an incredible team across disciplines.”
Title: Practical Guide to Clinical Trial Accessibility: Making Trial Participation a Standard of Care
Authors: Hedyeh Ebrahimi, Jodie Allen, Yelak Biru, Ravin Garg, Christine Hodgdon, William K. Oh, David Steensma, Sumanta K. Pal, Therese Mulvey
Read The Full Article at ASCO Educational Book.
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Global Summit on War & Cancer 2023, Online
Dec. 14-16, 2023