Cancer Summit

Oncology Clinical Trials and Translational Research

Clinical trials and translational research are the backbone of advancing cancer treatment, bridging laboratory discoveries with real-world clinical applications to improve patient outcomes. Current trends in oncology trials include adaptive trial designs, basket and umbrella trials, and real-world evidence integration, which allow more efficient evaluation of targeted therapies, immunotherapies, and combination regimens. Precision medicine approaches are increasingly incorporated, with patient selection guided by genomic, proteomic, and biomarker profiles to ensure optimal treatment matching and reduce trial attrition. Advances in digital technology, including electronic patient-reported outcomes, telemonitoring, and AI-driven data analytics, are improving trial recruitment, monitoring, and endpoint assessments. Translational research efforts focus on identifying novel molecular targets, understanding mechanisms of resistance, and developing predictive models for therapeutic response. Ethical considerations, regulatory compliance, and patient safety remain critical throughout the research continuum, especially when testing emerging modalities such as CAR-T therapies, gene editing, and personalized vaccines. This session will examine innovative trial designs, the integration of laboratory and clinical research, emerging therapeutic pipelines, and strategies to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into safe, effective, and accessible cancer therapies worldwide.