Translating CLL Trial Success to Real-World Treatment Application

Scott Huntington, MD, MPH, MSc, an associate professor of internal medicine (hematology) at Yale School of Medicine and the medical director of Yale Cancer Center's Hematology Outpatient Program, spoke with CancerNetwork® about how his institution works to optimize the care of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and other malignancies. Specifically, he highlighted his work at Yale’s Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center, where he leads research dedicated to improving the delivery of complex cancer therapies during routine care.

According to Huntington, there may be challenges in translating successful treatment outcomes with novel therapeutic agents observed in clinical trials to a real-world patient population. He described how the COPPER Center operates to optimize treatment in a real-world setting while addressing different barriers to care such as out-of-pocket costs.

Transcript:

Certainly, advances have come through clinical trials. We have a great number of new drugs for not only CLL but lymphoma. But these are complex therapies, and they were developed in large academic medical institutions like [mine]. What we have seen is that there are going to be challenges in translating what we learned in clinical trials to the real-world patient population. Either the patients [or the settings] might be different than what we see in clinical trials.

The COPPER Center looks at, when we have a new drug, how do we actually deliver it in the real-world setting? Are there toxicities that we see that we might be able to manage better? Are there barriers to patients even getting access to it? We look at things like disparities or out-of-pocket costs. The COPPER Center is what we call a T4 translation of the clinical trial to the real world, rather than the bench to bedside. Once we have a drug, how do we make sure it's delivered safely and most effectively in the community?