Clinical trials: Turning discovery into hope

Through your donations, CCS supports independent clinical trials and provides foundational funding to the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG), Canada’s largest cooperative group for cancer clinical trials. In 2024, we invested over $16 million, enabling almost 4,000 patients to access new interventions through 119 clinical trials. But we can’t stop here – tomorrow’s wave of game-changing treatments depends on our investment in clinical trials today.

Here are 3 CCS-funded trials whose groundbreaking results have made headlines in the past 2 years.

For people diagnosed with mesothelioma – a rare and aggressive type of cancer – treatment options have long been limited, especially when the disease is found late. CCTG and Dr Quincy Chu led an international clinical trial focusing on improving outcomes for these patients. The team tested whether adding pembrolizumab (Keytruda), a drug that helps the immune system recognize and attack cancer, could improve outcomes when used alongside standard therapy. The results were significant: this combination reduced the risk of death by 21% compared to standard treatment alone. The treatment is now approved in Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan – an encouraging step forward for people facing one of the toughest cancer diagnoses.

Around the world, people with early-stage cervical cancer are often treated with a radical hysterectomy, a major surgery that can have a lasting physical and emotional impact. To determine whether an easier procedure could work just as well, Dr Marie Plante and her colleagues conducted a clinical trial involving 700 women from 12 countries. They compared outcomes between two types of surgery: the traditional radical hysterectomy and a simpler, less invasive version. The results were clear and encouraging – both procedures had similar recurrence rates, but those who received the simpler surgery experienced better overall survival and improved quality of life. Now, people with early-stage cervical cancer can be effectively treated with this less invasive approach.

In a world-first clinical trial that spanned 17 years, Dr Christopher Booth, Dr Kerry Courneya and their international colleagues explored whether adding regular, guided exercise to treatment plans could improve long-term outcomes for people with colon cancer. Participants in this CCTG-led clinical trial either received standard health education materials or a 3-year structured exercise program. The results were remarkable: those who received the exercise support had a 28% lower risk of cancer returning or a new cancer developing and lowered their risk of death by 37%. The effectiveness of exercise programs is impressive and the trial validates this as a bold new avenue of care.