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MRC CTU director Mahesh Parmar in Nature podcast: trials on trial
MRC CTU director Mahesh Parmar in Nature
podcast: trials on trial
20 October 2011
The MRC CTU's Director Mahesh Parmar has
featured in a recent edition of Nature’s popular series of
podcasts.
The weekly shows provide more detail on
articles from each week’s journal, including interviews with people
linked to the stories. In the 29 September edition, Mahesh was
interviewed in a segment called ‘Trials on trial’. He talks about
the current state of clinical trials, including the achievements
made so far and the challenges that remain, particularly with
regard to the time taken from an idea for a new therapy to the
trial’s results being implemented into clinical practice (up to 17
years).
He also comments that more creativity and
flexibility in trial design could reduce this interval. The concept
of ‘adaptive trials’, which can change design as the trial
progresses, is suggested as one approach to improve the
situation. The MRC CTU’s STAMPEDE
trial is a good example of one such adaptive design.
The podcast follows an article in that week’s
edition of Nature entitled ‘Translational research: 4 ways
to fix the clinical trial’.
Both the podcast and the article are available
from Nature
podcasts.
