Canadian Cancer Trials

The Canadian Cancer Trials website will be the country’s first national, bilingual resource for finding cancer-related clinical trials.

CanadianCancerTrials.ca takes existing cancer trial information and brings it together to help patients and their caregivers find trials.

As well, the website will offer better, more accessible information to researchers, policy-makers, funders and administrators.

The Partnership is working closely with the provinces and territories to provide the complete picture for clinical trials across Canada.

The new website will feature consistent and timely information. It will encompass trials being done by national study groups and independent researchers, as well as those sponsored by industry.

Canadian Cancer Trials partners include:

• The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), which invested substantially in creating an originally provincial clinical trial database, and is contributing its technology and expertise to the national website.
• The Canadian Association of Provincial Cancer Agencies and its members, the provincial cancer agencies and health services. They will provide administrative support to ensure the website is accurate and up-to-date.
• The Canadian Cancer Society, which will offer national, bilingual, toll-free phone support, and email support, for questions about clinical trials, or cancer.

The Partnership is making extensive investments to:

• modify the existing OICR clinical trial database into a national resource that’s searchable by province, city, drug and disease;
• translate trials and make the website bilingual; and
• provide the funding for telephone and email support.

Set to launch in the spring of 2009, the Canadian Cancer Trials website will allow people to receive email alerts about new trials that may be appropriate for them – or their family member or a patient.

What is a clinical trial?

A clinical trial is a scientific study that investigates new ways to prevent, diagnose, treat or manage a disease. In a clinical trial, the new approach is compared with the current practice to see if outcomes improve.

As a featured service of the Cancerview Canada portal being launched by the Partnership the Canadian Cancer Trials website will be available:

• through CanadianCancerTrials.ca
• as part of individual partner sites, where local trials will be displayed as a starting point €– with an option to see full national data

Outcomes

The project’s user-friendly, national, bilingual website will be the best source of information about cancer clinical trials across the country. This will enable better decision-making for patients who want to take part in trials €– and for those caring for them.