CANCER

Bloodwise 15
STRATEGIC REPORT
Craddock and Peter Hillman and the passion of
former England footballer and leukaemia survivor
Geoff Thomas, we designed a solution: the Trials
Acceleration Programme (TAP).
The unique design of the programme enables
researchers to do what they do best, which is to ask the
research questions that might lead to new treatments
for patients. They’re supported by a central hub in
Birmingham, housed in the Cancer Research UK
Clinical Trials Unit: this hub has the bureaucracy and
administration of setting up trials nailed, thanks to
the necessary skills in contract negotiation and ethics
amongst other things. This means that everyone
involved can play to their strengths and progress can
be made more quickly.
We’ve also provided funding for research nurses or
data analysts to enable 13 centres to be networked
in the TAP. This means more equal access to trials
throughout the UK. And because the centres
recruit patients at the same time, we accelerate the
recruitment and reduce the duration of the trials.
This year the two-year pilot phase of TAP was
reviewed by an international panel of blood cancer
and solid tumour experts from Europe and the US.
It also included the director of the National Cancer
Research Institute (NCRI) and representatives from
pharmaceutical companies. The panel was chaired
by Professor Christine Chomienne, President of the
European Haematology Association.
At the time of the review, 14 trials had been approved
and 7 opened, with 300 patients recruited against a
target accrual of 950. There are now 15 approved trials
and 10 open for recruitment.
The panel were unanimous in their conclusion that
TAP has been a great success.
The panel agreed that the pilot had tested and proven
the case for a centralised hub and although the
ambitious target of six months to open a trial hadn’t
been met, the recruitment of patients had been on
target once the trial opened.
I applaud the progress you’ve
made from a standing start,
and I fully support you in your
endeavours.
A letter from Sean Duffy, National Clinical Director
for Cancer, supported the panel’s conclusion.
The panel especially noted innovative statistical and
trial design, as well as the fact that nearly £100 million
of drugs had been leveraged from pharmaceuticals
during the pilot phase. One partner, Novartis, noted
that TAP had enabled a 50% reduction in the cost of
putting a patient through the trial.
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