Who Pays For Mesothelioma Clinical Trials
Clinical trials of new drugs and treatments for mesothelioma cancers are studies designed to determine whether the treatments should be approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and then made available to the public. Clinical trials are often the last steps in a complicated and time-consuming research process that a new drug or treatment must go through before it can be considered safe for human use by the FDA.
Trials are usually preceded by in vitro, or test tube studies, followed by in vivo, or studies using animals as models. These pre-clinical studies may take years to complete, and only one in 50 drugs that enter pre-clinical testing winds up being safe enough to be tested in people. Only one in five of those drugs that make it to clinical trials eventually proves safe and effective enough to receive FDA approval.
Clinical trials are essential to extending the average life expectancy mesothelioma patients. To learn more about clinical trials, the treatment of mesothelioma and about doctors and cancer centers who treat the disease, get a free informational packet from the Mesothelioma Center.
Money for Mesothelioma Clinical Trials
Clinical trials can be conducted at hospitals, universities, clinics, medical centers or doctors’ offices and can be sponsored by an organization such as a pharmaceutical company, a medical institution, a non-profit foundation, a volunteer group, a federal agency (the National Institutes of Health, or the Department of Defense, for example) or an individual, such as a physician or other member of the medical community. They must adhere to strict legal and ethical standards and most American clinical trials are registered and regulated by the federal government.
Clinical trials are only one component of medical research which consumes six cents of each health dollar spent yearly in the United States. In 2007, total U.S. spending on biomedical research and development was $101.1 billion. Approximately 58 percent of that amount came from private industry, 27 percent from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and 15 percent from other sources.
The National Cancer Institute's (NCI) budget for 2007, which comes from the NIH, was about $4.9 billion. Overall funding for clinical trials for cancer research that year was $843,748,000. (The 2010 total was slightly higher: $852,277,000.)
Assuming that private industry funding is approximately 2.15 times that of the NCI’s in total research dollars, one can broadly estimate that the share of industry funding for clinical cancer trials in 2007 was approximately $1,814,058,200.
However speculative that estimate, it is even harder to ascertain who contributes to the costs of clinical trials for mesothelioma because the percentages do not remain the same. In 2011, there were 188 clinical trials actively looking for participants, or recently completed in the area of mesothelioma research. Of those, 65 were funded by the NIH, two by the U.S. Department of Defense, 53 by private industry (i.e. pharmaceutical and biomedical companies) and 70 by universities, cancer centers, hospitals and/or research organizations, both in the United States and abroad.
Further difficulty in estimating funding levels arises because, in some cases, financial support is shared among different collaborators: drug companies and university hospitals or cancer institutes may all contribute to a single clinical trial.
In addition, there are cases where private donations may also help cover the costs of a mesothelioma clinical trial. For example, the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF), which raises money from individual donors, awarded research grants of $7.1 million over the past 10 years. And recently the University of Hawaii Cancer Center received a $3.58 million gift from an anonymous donor for mesothelioma research.
Patient Costs
In addition to research costs, there are also patient costs associated with clinical trials. These patient costs may include transportation, doctor visits, hospital stays, laboratory tests, X-rays and scans.
These costs are often covered by health insurance, depending upon the patient’s policy. Some states have laws or special agreements that require health insurance companies to pay for routine care received in a clinical trial. Extra costs related to clinical trials that may not be covered by health insurance policies can include extra tests, doctor and nurse expenses, and research and analysis fees, which must be paid for by the organization sponsoring the trial.
For patients over the age of 65, Medicare covers "routine" costs related to all government-sponsored phase II and III clinical trials.
Clinical Trial Sponsors
The following is a list of current mesothelioma clinical trial sponsors by category:Clinical Research Network
| Group Name | Number of Studies |
|---|---|
| All Ireland Cooperative Oncology Research Group | 1 |
| Cancer and Leukemia Group B | 8 |
| Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group | 2 |
| European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) | 4 |
| Gynecologic Oncology Group | 1 |
| NCIC Clinical Trials Group | 1 |
| North Central Cancer Treatment Group | 3 |
| Southwest Oncology Group | 5 |
Industry
| Group Name | Number of Studies |
|---|---|
| Abbott | 1 |
| Alfacell | 1 |
| Anza Therapeutics, Inc. | 1 |
| Astellas Pharma Inc | 1 |
| AstraZeneca | 2 |
| Bayer | 1 |
| CanBas Co. Ltd. | 2 |
| Celgene Corporation | 1 |
| CSA Medical, Inc. | 2 |
| Eli Lilly and Company | 13 |
| Genentech | 2 |
| Insys Therapeutics Inc | 3 |
| Mannkind Corporation | 1 |
| Merck | 3 |
| MolMed S.p.A. | 3 |
| Morphotek | 2 |
| Novartis | 2 |
| Novartis Pharmaceuticals | 3 |
| OSI Pharmaceuticals | 1 |
| Pfizer | 2 |
| Precision Therapeutics | 2 |
| Reset Medical, Inc. | 1 |
| Schering-Plough | 1 |
| Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc | 1 |
| Sponsor Name Pending | 1 |
| Taxolog Inc. | 1 |
| TopoTarget A/S | 2 |
National Institutes of Health
| Group Name | Number of Studies |
|---|---|
| National Cancer Institute (NCI) | 65 |
U.S. Federal Agency, excluding NIH
| Group Name | Number of Studies |
|---|---|
| Department of Defense | 2 |
University/Organization
| Group Name | Number of Studies |
|---|---|
| Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania | 5 |
| Alberta Health Services | 1 |
| Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute | 1 |
| Brigham and Women's Hospital - | 4 |
| British Thoracic Society | 1 |
| Burzynski Research Institute | 1 |
| California Cancer Consortium | 1 |
| Cancer Research UK | 1 |
| Case Comprehensive Cancer Center | 2 |
| Centre Oscar Lambret - | 1 |
| Columbia University | 5 |
| Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest University | 1 |
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | 7 |
| Erasmus Medical Center | 2 |
| Eskisehir Osmangazi University | 1 |
| European Lung Cancer Working Party | 1 |
| Fox Chase Cancer Center | 2 |
| Georgetown University | 1 |
| Groupe Francais De Pneumo-Cancerologie | 1 |
| Gruppo Italiano Mesotelioma | 1 |
| H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute | 1 |
| Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center - | 1 |
| HSK Wiesbaden | 1 |
| Institute of Cancer Research, United Kingdom | 1 |
| Institute of Oncology Ljubljana | 2 |
| Istituto Clinico Humanitas | 2 |
| King's College London - | 1 |
| M.D. Anderson Cancer Center | 5 |
| Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota | 1 |
| Massachusetts General Hospital | 2 |
| Massachusetts General Hospital | 2 |
| Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center | 11 |
| Nevada Cancer Institute | 1 |
| New York University School of Medicine | 1 |
| Northwestern University | 1 |
| Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre | 1 |
| Papworth Hospital | 1 |
| Queen Mary University of London | 1 |
| Rigshospitalet, Denmark | 1 |
| Rijnstate Hospital | 1 |
| Roswell Park Cancer Institute | 2 |
| Slovenian Research Agency | 1 |
| St. Vincent Medical Center - Los Angeles | 2 |
| Stanford University | 2 |
| Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research | 3 |
| The Netherlands Cancer Institute | 1 |
| University College, London | 1 |
| University Health Network, Toronto | 3 |
| University Hospital, Antwerp | 1 |
| University Hospital, Caen | 2 |
| University Hospital, Ghent | 1 |
| University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center | 1 |
| University of Alabama at Birmingham | 1 |
| University of California, Irvine | 1 |
| University of California, Los Angeles | 1 |
| University of Chicago | 7 |
| University of Glasgow | 1 |
| University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey | 1 |
| University of Pennsylvania | 3 |
| University of Pittsburgh | 1 |
| University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | 1 |
| USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center | 2 |
| Wake Forest University | 1 |
| Wuhan University | 1 |
-
05/18/2012 -
The Queen of Disco Donna Summer died on Thursday in her Naples, Florida, home after a quiet battle with lung cancer.
She was 63.
The five-time G ..
-
05/17/2012 -
Thoracic surgeon Robert Cameron, M.D., used his second annual Symposium for Lung-Sparing Therapies for Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma last week in Los ..
-
05/17/2012 -
Researchers in Singapore have uncovered new technology for studying cancer stem cells that could spark quicker development of a more effective therapy ..
© 2012 The Mesothelioma Center |
Last Modified Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 | Disclaimer | Privacy Policy |
The information provided by The Mesothelioma Center is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Sponsored by a law firm concentrating in asbestos litigation, The Peterson Firm, LLP with offices at 1350 Connecticut Ave, NW, Fifth Floor, Washington DC 20036.
