Your money goes towards ‘academic-led’ trials (i.e. non-commercial trials) where the research questions are driven by patient need rather than commercial concerns.

The commercial model plays an essential role in modern medicines development, as the phenomenal response of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to COVID has shown. But the academic-led approach allows for different kinds of scientific questions, like:

• Could patients reap the same benefits of chemotherapy, or radiotherapy, if we used less treatment? Or:
• Which well-established, long-standing treatment(s) is, or are, best for treating a specific form of breast, or prostate, or lung cancer?

These important questions are mainly asked by the not-for-profit research sector. Through the support of the Health Research Board, the Irish Cancer Society – and other generous donors – doctors in Ireland can open trials that have the potential to change how cancer is treated.

Our team of 60+ staff work across an array of teams to support cancer treating doctors, surgeons, research nurses, data managers and other healthcare professionals at 18 cancer trial sites all over Ireland.

We sponsor cancer trials – which is to say we take responsibility for ensuring that any trial we open in Ireland meets the legal requirements for conducting trials which in turn ensures continual medical oversight for the safety of the patients who participate in our trials.

We employ people dedicated to meeting regulatory and research ethics standards.

We continually train our staff and audit our processes against internationally recognised scientific and regulatory standards.

We have a pharmacovigilance team whose purpose is to track any side effects for patients on our trials– whether those events are trial-related or not – and ensure that relevant adverse effects are submitted to regulatory authorities as they occur, as well as providing periodic safety reports.

Our clinical team supports cancer-treating doctors and surgeons to develop research ‘protocols’ that will efficiently and effectively recruit patients and generate the data needed to answer the hypotheses (research questions) underpinning cancer trials. The same clinical team will shepherd the set-up of the trial, including obtaining the necessary regulatory authorisations and ethics committee approvals, before periodically visiting trial sites to ensure that a trial is operating precisely as directed in its protocol.

Meanwhile our biometrics team will work with the cancer-treating doctors and surgeons on the design and statistical methods used in the trial.  They set up and manage the database that gathers and analyses the data about the patient on the trial and collaborate with the clinical team and the hospital sites to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the data collected. At the close of the trial they analyse the final data to assess the outcome of the research questions of the trial and support the cancer-treating doctors and surgeons in the reporting of the results.

Our leadership, finance and communications teams work closely with our Board to ensure that the government, politicians, media – and people like you – understand the value of cancer trials, and see them not as diversions from patient care, but an essential part of it.

Thank you for helping to make all of this possible.