WVUH-East Regional Cancer Program
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Clinical Trials
As a direct result of our program's affiliation with WVU and the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center in Morgantown, we are pleased to offer clinical trials in the Eastern Panhandle for four cancer drugs.
A clinical trial is an investigative study conducted with cancer patients to evaluate a new form of treatment. The WVUH-East Regional Cancer Program enrolls appropriate patients in four clinical trials: NSABP Protocol B-36 for patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer, NSABP B-42 for postmenopausal women with breast cancer to determine if estrogen-blocking medication decreases the risk of recurrence, E5202 for Stage II colon cancer to test whether 6 months of aggressive chemotherapy decreases the risk of recurrence, and CALBG 90401 for advanced prostate cancer to determine whether adding a new drug that blocks the blood supply to cancer cells increases the effectiveness of standard chemotherapy.
As the protocol for each clinical trial is different, patients should talk with their oncologist to see if they might qualify for the program.
All four of these are Phase III clinical trials, meaning that the drug or treatment is being compared to a standard existing treatment. "We take a new drug or new drug combination and test it to the best standard treatment in hopes that it will eventually become the new standard treatment," states Dr. Timothy Bowers, Medical Director of the WVUH-East Regional Cancer Program, adding that most standard cancer treatments used today were first tested in clinical trials.