Dr. Porcu on the Need for Diverse Representation in Clinical Trials

Pierluigi Porcu, MD, professor, director, Division of Medical Oncology and Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation, Jefferson Health, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, discusses the need for diverse representation in clinical trials.

The end goal of cancer research is to find better mechanisms for treatment delivered through more effective and safer drugs, Porcu says. The purpose of clinical trials is to test new drugs in ways that are going to be meaningful in the real world, making it important to include large, diverse populations to better replicate patient populations who are treated outside of clinical trials, Porcu explains.

However, this has been a challenge because enrollment in clinical trials features with many obstacles and barriers, leading to some trial populations to not being representative of the real world, Porcu continues. This poses challenges in determining if treatments are equally effective across different populations, Porcu concludes.