Cancer trials that are run from Oxford cover a very broad range of tumour types types (including solid tumours such as ovarian, breast and bowel cancer and haematological malignancies such as lymphoma) and they test many different potential treatment interventions (e.g. radiotherapy, chemotherapy, biological therapy and surgery). In addition there are large cancer epidemiological studies that are designed to highlight new risk factors for cancer or to assess population-based interventions that might reduce the incidence of cancer.

Clinical trials range from very small focused phase I and II trials looking at specific patient populations, defining toxicities and maximum tolerated doses of drugs, right through to large scale phase III trials that are assessing efficacy of a novel treatment or intervention against what is felt to be the current gold standard.

All of our trials are approached with an academic and administrative rigour that is vital to their success and is dependent on the excellent support of Research Services and the University of Oxford Clinical Trials and Research Governance team (CTRG).

In the Oncology Clinical Trials Office (OCTO) alone we have enrolled 10,000 patients into cancer intervention trials over the last 10 years.

In addition to collecting the clinical outcome data for these trials we are very keen on and successful at the collection of tumour of blood samples that we can use in laboratory research to try and define which specific patient populations may respond to a specific intervention or conversely, populations who may get exaggerated toxicity and for whom the risk:benefit ratio of that treatment may not be justified. This means we work in close collaboration with excellent cancer scientists both within and without Oxford.