Trials of New Cancer Therapies Can’t Enroll Enough Patients
Engineering of human immune cells to fight off cancer promised to help cure the disease, and, so far, it appears to be living up to the hype. So you might think that enlisting patients to take part in trials of the new therapies would be easy. But the New York Times reports that there's a hitch. First, many biotech firms are creating similar and competing treatments. Second, they can't be offered to all patients, perhaps because their cancers are treated surgically or because they don't attend a hospital involved with research. Combined, those factors mean that many trials are failing to recruit enough people to obtain useful results—and it's even worse for targeted therapies.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets
When wastewater surveillance turns into a hunt for a single infected individual, the ethics get tricky.
The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.
Plug-in hybrids are often sold as a transition to EVs, but new data from Europe shows we’re still underestimating the emissions they produce.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.