Bringing Cutting-Edge Therapies To Edmonton
Karin Olafson - 14 October 2021
Dr. Randeep Sangha shares how the international reputation of the Cross Cancer Institute’s Clinical Trials Unit can mean life-changing opportunities for local patients.
Early in his oncology career, a colleague shared a nugget of wisdom with Dr. Randeep Sangha, and it’s something that’s always stuck with him.
“I was told we may treat 5,000 patients throughout our career, but one positive clinical trial can help out hundreds of thousands of patients,” says Sangha, an oncologist and director of the Cross Cancer Institute’s (CCI) Clinical Trials Unit. “I think that’s one of the reasons why I like clinical trials — it offers that hope for a greater proportion of patients and advances the science of treating cancer”
This is particularly true for the CCI’s Clinical Trials Unit, which connects hundreds of cancer patients to cutting-edge therapies. The unit’s team includes over 60 investigators — researchers who are medical and radiation oncologists — who improve the prognosis and quality of life for patients diagnosed with all types of cancer by testing new treatments. Currently, the unit places more than 500 cancer patients on new drugs being trialled each year; this recruitment is the highest per capita in Canada. But the team has ambitious goals and hopes to increase that to 1,000 patients within the next five years.