Revitalising cancer trials post-pandemic: time for reform

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic posed significant risk to the health of cancer patients, compromised standard cancer care and interrupted clinical cancer trials, prompting dramatic streamlining of services. From this health crisis has emerged the opportunity to carry forward an unexpected legacy of positive reforms to clinical cancer research, where conventionally convoluted approvals processes, inefficient trial design, procedures and data gathering could benefit from the lessons in rationalisation learned during the pandemic.