Research - clinical trials for thyroid cancer

Cancer research trials are carried out to try to find new and better treatments for cancer. Trials that are carried out on patients are known as clinical trials.

Clinical trials| may be carried out to:

• test new treatments, such as new chemotherapy drugs, gene therapy or cancer vaccines
• look at new combinations of existing treatments, or change the way they are given, in order to make them more effective or to reduce side effects
• compare the effectiveness of drugs used for symptom control
• find out how cancer treatments work
• see which treatments are the most cost-effective.

Trials are the only reliable way to find out if a different operation, type of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or other treatment is better than what is already available.

Taking part in a trial

You may be asked to take part in a treatment research trial. There can be many benefits in doing this. Trials help to improve knowledge about cancer and develop new treatments. You will also be carefully monitored during and after the study. Usually, several hospitals around the country take part in these trials. It is important to bear in mind that some treatments that look promising at first are often later found not to be as good as existing treatments, or to have side effects that outweigh the benefits.

Blood and tumour samples

Many blood samples and bone marrow or tumour biopsies may be taken to help make the right diagnosis. You may be asked for your permission to use some of your samples for research into cancer. If you are taking part in a trial you may also be asked to give other samples which may be frozen and stored for future use when new research techniques become available. These samples will have your name removed from them (anonymised) so you can’t be identified.

The research may be carried out at the hospital where you are treated, or it may take place at another hospital. This type of research takes a long time, so you are unlikely to hear the results. The samples will, however, be used to increase knowledge about the causes of cancer and its treatment. This research will, hopefully, improve the outlook for future patients.

Current research

If you have papillary or follicular thyroid cancer you may be asked to take part in a trial called HiLo. The trial is trying to find out if low-dose radioactive iodine is as effective as the standard high-dose. The trial is also looking at how the drug recombinant human thyroid stimulating hormone affects the way the radioactive iodine works. Some of those taking part in the trial will be given rhTSH and others won’t. Your doctor can give you more information about this trial.

Another trial, for people with advanced thyroid cancer, is investigating a newer way of giving radiotherapy called intensity-modulated radiotherapy, or IMRT. This is a way of giving radiotherapy so that the treatment beams are shaped to the cancer and allows the dose of radiotherapy to be altered over the whole treatment area, avoiding treating healthy tissue. Higher doses of radiotherapy can be given but with potentially fewer side effects. The trial is trying to find the best and safest dose of IMRT.