Community Clinical Oncology Program and Minority-Based Community Clinical Oncology Program: Accomplishments in Cancer Clinical Trials

摘要

The Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP) was designed 27 years ago to engage community physicians in the National Cancer Institute (NCI) clinical trials programs and thereby facilitate the incorporation of research results into practice. The program was envisioned as a network that would participate in cancer treatment clinical trials and lead the way for innovative cancer prevention and control strategies. The Minority-Based Community Clinical Oncology Program (MB-CCOP) was developed as a means to provide the infrastructure for clinical trials in those institutions which serve communities with large minority and underserved populations. These two programs have demonstrated substantial success in developing local clinical research infrastructures: accruing significant numbers of cancer patients onto cancer treatment clinical trials and implementing several very large-scale cancer prevention clinical trials. Through the Research Bases (competitively funded Cooperative Groups and Cancer Centers), CCOP and MB-CCOP physicians in practice partner with academic investigators working out of NCI-designated Cancer Centers and Cooperative Groups to test and validate the latest interventions against cancer. These community physicians provide real-world implementation of the trials and subsequently, the successful regimens are rapidly integrated into their practice of medicine. The MB-CCOP program is now almost 20 years old and provides the highest concentration of minority participants accrued onto NCI-sponsored clinical trials.