On March 8, ASCO and the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) held the Best Practices in Cancer Clinical Trials Workshop at ASCO Headquarters in Alexandria, VA. More than 60 attendees participated in the event, which focused on developing solutions that could improve the efficiency of conducting clinical trials today.

The goal of the workshop was to promote practical solutions to meeting existing regulatory and administrative requirements on research. “Existing requirements are very inefficient and costly,” said 2015-2016 ASCO President Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, FASCO, who gave the opening presentation of the workshop and has made the issue a major initiative of her presidential term. “We want to make sure we can get safe drugs to our patients, and improving the efficiency of clinical research is key moving forward.”

The workshop also included a presentation by representatives from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s office, who discussed the Vice President’s “moonshot” initiative. This ambitious project, announced by the White House in January, is intended to accelerate cancer research and break down barriers currently impeding biomedical research, with the goal of doubling the pace of progress against cancer in coming years.

Stakeholders from across the cancer research community spent the majority of the workshop engaged in in-depth breakout sessions on key topics in clinical research, including overcoming challenges to clinical trial contracts, improving clinical trial coverage analyses and budgeting, and complying with training and regulatory requirements.

Dr. Vose will present on the solutions discussed at the ASCO-AACI Best Practices in Cancer Clinical Trials Workshop at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting in June.