Disparities in subgroup populations enrolled in lung cancer trials

Abstract

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. All drugs available for the treatment of lung cancer reached the market after reporting positive results from pivotal clinical studies. However, in these trials not all patient subgroups are adequately represented, with some discrepancies reported in patients’ accrual especially concerning age, gender and ethnicity. Hence, a new drug entering the market for the treatment of all patients may have been investigated only in certain patient subgroups, while the reported results have been generalized for the therapy of all patients. The impact of certain characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and age of patients enrolled in randomized trials on the final results has been examined and discussed in this article.

Keywords::

• discrepancies
• drug development
• lung cancer
• minorities
• non-small-cell lung cancer
• randomized trials
• small-cell lung cancer

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.