Our Vision
Access to clinical trials is limited by many factors – these include barriers of geography, transportation, poverty/lower income, lower education and socioeconomic status as well as lack of specialist access. A main barrier however is the clinical trial design themselves. Many trials focus on a relatively narrow but common clinical area. For example, many melanoma trials exclude mucosal or uveal melanoma patients or limit the number of prior lines of therapy. These designs inadvertently exclude many patient populations from novel therapeutics and limits our ability to improve care in these unstudied areas.
Trial participation and developing novel treatments is an important priority for the NCI and ASCO. While some of these barriers are complex and multidimensional (such as poverty/socioeconomic status/education) we aim to address the issue of underserved populations and geographic trial availability through a west-coast based clinical trial consortium coordinated by the University of California Melanoma and Skin Cancer Consortium (UCMSCC).
This consortium is devoted to improving melanoma/skin cancer treatment, outcomes, and survivorship by developing investigator initiated clinical trials for tumors or disease states not well studied by current industry and cooperative groups and supported across the consortium.
Our primary objective is to conduct investigator initiated trials using novel and existing agents as well as radiation therapy and surgery to improve melanoma/skin cancer outcomes. Through these investigator initiated trials, we envision an environment for mentoring future generations of physician scientists where senior UCMCSCC members would mentor clinical and post-doctoral fellows through the entire clinical trial process.