The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute is proud to offer state-of-the-art paradigm-shifting trials through its world renowned Phase I Clinical Trial Program. Phase I trials offer novel therapies in their first stage of testing. Due to the nature of their design, they allow patients with any diagnosis to participate, offering solutions to patients with rare cancers without standard options. This allows patients who may have exhausted traditional options for therapy to continue the fight against their cancer. Remarkably, this process has pioneered the discovery of certain therapies for select tumor types that would not have been realized without a Phase I clinical trial.
Phase I trials have ushered in the era of Immunotherapy and Molecular Therapy worldwide.
Through this program we have fostered multiple anti-cancer agents that have changed the face of oncologic therapy forever. Drugs such as antiPD1 (nivolumab, pembrolizumab, atezolizumab, durvalimab, cemiplimab), antiCTLA4 agents (ipilimumab) and molecularly targeted agents that are now standard have come through our program and were available to patients years before being available as standard therapy.
Phase I trials investigate promising agents that work by exploiting some feature or pathway that is unique to or exaggerated in cancer cells such as a growth factor receptor, kinase, or angiogenesis pathway. Recent studies have shown that patients who receive therapy on Phase I oncology trials utilizing immunotherapeutic and targeted agents have similar rates of response due to this different dose response relationships than cytotoxic chemotherapies. (Clin Cancer Res; 16(4); 1289–97)