Aims:
To provide participants with a practical introduction to the biology, diagnosis, staging, and treatment of cancer, and to explain how these inform the design, conduct, assessment, analysis, reporting, and oversight of cancer clinical trials. The course will focus on the core concepts underpinning key trial outcomes, including adverse events, response, survival, and other time-to-event endpoints. It will also provide an opportunity for attendees from a range of professional backgrounds to share experience and build connections across the cancer trials community.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course, participants will have a better understanding of the clinical and trial-related data that contribute to cancer trial design, conduct, analysis, and reporting, and of the principles for interpreting and presenting these data. In particular, participants should be able to demonstrate greater knowledge of:
- cancer biology and its relevance to treatment selection, tumour spread, and outcome assessment
- cancer diagnosis and staging, and their implications for screening, eligibility criteria, and trial entry
- commonly reported patient and tumour characteristics, including considerations in selecting stratification factors
- cancer treatments, including practical issues in documenting and reporting treatment delivery and protocol compliance
- adverse events associated with cancer therapies, and principles for their assessment and reporting
- response assessment in solid tumours and haematological malignancies, and the reporting of response-based endpoints
- survival and other time-to-event endpoints commonly used in cancer trials
- challenges arising in trials of novel therapies, including targeted agents and biomarker-informed treatments
A provisional agenda can be found
here, however please be aware that session titles, speakers, and timings are provisional and may be subject to change.