Clinical Trials
Cancer clinical trials help answer important questions about medical care in an effort to develop new and improved ways to treat all patients with cancer and those who will develop cancer in the future.
Find current clinical trials offered by Duke Cancer Institute:
Research Overview
The Hematologic Malignancy Program is closely associated with the Duke Cancer Institute, consistently rated among the nation’s top cancer programs by U.S.News & World Report.
Patients benefit directly from Duke’s leadership in cancer research, allowing us to offer tomorrow’s innovations today in the field of cell signaling, stem cell therapies, cellular targeting, tumor immunology, and drug development.
Read about recent developments from the chronic lymphocytic leukemia lab.
Recent advances from the Duke Hematologic Malignancies Research Program include:
- Duke researchers were part of national studies determining that chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients taking imatinib (Gleevec) as a first-line therapy can expect to have long term survival compared to those who had traditional interferon-alpha therapy. This study shows that sophisticated drug design, like imatinib, could contribute to more effective cancer drugs.
- Duke researchers are leading efforts to evaluate leukemia patients prior to starting chemotherapy to better predict those who will experience excess toxicity, allowing for the development of early intervention strategies to improve outcomes.
- Duke’s diagnostic imaging capabilities give patients access to the full spectrum of technology, from traditional x-ray, computed tomography (CT) scans, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) to state-of-the-art protocols combining positron emission tomography (PET) and CT scans to provide more sophisticated diagnostic information.
- Duke pathology experts can go beyond standard diagnostics to monitor leukemia and lymphoma patients at the molecular level using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques.
- Duke immunologists have pinpointed how a widely used treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma attacks abnormal immune cells, called B cells. They found that anti-CD20 (a receptor protein) antibodies triggered the killing of B cells only by activating immune cells called monocytes to attack the B cells. Currently, a clinical trial is allowing researchers to explore genetic differences among B-cell lymphomas that will affect their sensitivity to anti-CD20 antibodies. Understanding such genetic differences will lead to greatly improved therapies for both lymphomas and autoimmune diseases.
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