Genitourinary Oncology Program

Kidney Cancer (Renal Cancer)

About Clinical Trials

Every successful cancer treatment being used today started as a clinical trial, a three-step research process to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a new treatment.

Patients who participate in these successful trials are the first to benefit from the new therapy.

Clinical trials take place in many hospitals and cancer centers across the country, making it possible for doctors to use the newest treatments to care for cancer patients.

Each carefully planned study is designed to answer certain questions and to find out specific information about how well a new drug or treatment method works.

All new treatments go through three steps or phases of clinical trials:

Phase I trials are the first studies in people to evaluate how a new drug should be given (by mouth, injected into the blood, or injected into the muscle), how often the drug should be given, and what dose is safe. Phase I trials usually enroll only a small number of patients, sometimes as few as a dozen.

Phase II trials continue to test the safety of the drug and begin to evaluate how well the new drug works. Phase II studies usually focus on a particular type of cancer.

Phase III trials test new drugs, new combinations of drugs, or new surgical procedures in comparison to the current standard for treatment. A participant will usually be assigned at random (called randomization) to either the standard treatment group or the new treatment group. Phase III trials often enroll large numbers of people and may be conducted at doctors' offices, clinics, and cancer centers nationwide.

All clinical trial participants receive the best care available and their reactions to the treatment are watched very closely. If the treatment does not seem to be helping, a doctor can take a patient out of a study. A patient also may choose to leave the trial at any time. If a patient leaves a research study for any reason, standard care and treatment are still available.

Clinical Trials at The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center

This page was last updated on: March 3, 2008.