Dr. Nordquist on Matching Patients to Clinical Trials

Luke Nordquist, MD, FACP, urologic medical oncologist, founder, CEO, and medical director of the Urology Cancer Center and GU Research Network, founder/CEO, Precision Cancer Research, and founder/CEO, Cancer Specialty Pharmacy, discusses matching specific patients with clinical trials in oncology.

Rather than trying to match a patient to a trial based on disease stage alone, Nordquist recommends looking at the specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Often, clinical trials will specify which drugs patients should or should not have been exposed to.

In practice, Nordquist may stratify patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer according to whether they have received abiraterone acetate (Zytiga). An additional stratification criterion may be whether patients have also received enzalutamide (Xtandi), says Nordquist.

If there are several patients that fall into these categories, Norquist looks for a clinical trial that matches the patient population. This may improve accrual and incentivize companies to conduct further research in the future, Nordquist concludes.