The Prostate Health Education Network (PHEN) announces a special “Clinical Trials Rally” initiative to increase African American participation in prostate cancer clinical trials.
The prostate cancer death rate among black men is 2.3 times greater than for men of any other racial or ethnic group within the United States according to National Cancer Institute statistics; this is the largest racial disparity for any type of cancer for men or women.
However, this population’s participation in clinical trials for new treatments rarely reaches the level of statistical significance, meaning that the data from these trials do not definitively determine the effectiveness of these treatments for black men. This is an increasingly urgent problem for the population most impacted by prostate cancer and in need of treatment breakthroughs.
Pharmaceutical organizations that are currently providing prostate cancer therapies and leading the research efforts to develop new therapies are supporting the launch of this new PHEN initiative. These include: Astellas, Bayer Healthcare, Janssen Biotech, Inc., and Medivation (now part of Pfizer). Other organizations will be invited to join this effort after it is launched. (visit: www.phentrials.com)