Optimisation immunotherapy clinical trials investigate ways of reducing the intensity of immunotherapy cancer treatment. This could be beneficial for patients’ quality of life. But these trials can be challenging to run, as patients may be concerned about the impact that reducing the intensity of treatment could have on the cancer.

This episode of the Trial Talk podcast focuses on the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL’s OPTIC study, which explores how people with cancer feel about taking part in optimisation immunotherapy trials. Clinical Fellow Sophie Merrick discusses the main barriers that patients face and recommendations to address them.

Resources:
•OPTIC study page: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/studies/all-st…/refine/optic/
•OPTIC results paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41416-024-02756-x.pdf
•REFINE podcast episode: on.soundcloud.com/Fe3C76csHkgCg2or5

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/4c9SfAr

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2024-06-18T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:25:23
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Berta Terre-Torras
Guests: Sophie Merrick
Producer: Berta Terre-Torras

The MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL is committed to actively involving patients and the public in our trials. All our Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) work is overseen by our PPI Group, made up of MRC CTU staff alongside seven patient representatives, with a wide range of experience in different areas. In this episode of the Trial Talk podcast, two members of the Unit’s PPI Group, Richard Stephens and Ian Newsome, discuss what PPI means to them; how they got involved as patient representatives in clinical research; and how the MRC CTU at UCL embeds PPI into our trials.

Resources:
• Our PPI group: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/patients-publi…our-ppi-group/
• PPI resources: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/patients-publi…ppi-resources/
• Testing Treatments: Better Research for Better Healthcare (book): www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK66204/

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/3KlKtak
For questions or feedback on the podcast series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk
As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us.
Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Other details:

Date of episode recording: 2024-05-29T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:34:43
Language of episode: English
Presenter:Charlotte Hartley
Guests: Ian Newsome, Richard Stephens
Producer: Charlotte Hartley

An estimand is a description of the research question a trial seeks to answer, which can help researchers better understand how their study should be designed and analysed. Estimands also provide a clear way to communicate treatment effects to different stakeholders. This episode of the Trial Talk podcast features Principal Research Fellow Brennan Kahan, exploring how triallists could benefit from using estimands. Brennan also discusses his recent paper which aims to demystify new guidance on the use of estimands.

Resources:
• The estimands framework: a primer on the ICH E9(R1): www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076316
• 'We must let the research question drive study methods' opinion piece: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9908044/
• Estimands in cluster-randomized trials: choosing analyses that answer the right question: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9908044/

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/4dazsWF

For questions or feedback on the podcast series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2024-04-25T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:21:29
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Charlotte Hartley
Guests: Brennan Kahan
Producer: Charlotte Hartley

Clinical trial results usually tell us how effective a treatment was on average for the overall group of participants, but a key question for clinicians, patients and policy makers is: which individual patients benefit most from the treatment and which don’t benefit as much? In the latest episode of the Trial Talk podcast, Peter Godolphin and David Fisher discuss a new method for determining how treatment effects differ between subgroups of patients across multiple clinical trials, as well as how other meta-analysis researchers can use it.

Resources:

• Estimating interactions and subgroup-specific treatment effects in meta-analysis without aggregation bias: A within-trial framework onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jrsm.1590
• Cochrane webinar recording training.cochrane.org/resource/estim…-meta-analysis
• GitHub page for metafloat package in Stata github.com/UCL/metafloat
• WHO REACT Group: IL6 Prospective meta-analysis jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781880
• STOPCAP collaborators: Docetaxel IPD meta-analysis www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/…00230-9/fulltext

For questions about the within-trial framework for subgroup analysis, you can email d.fisher@ucl.ac.uk or p.godolphin@ucl.ac.uk.
For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/43boETF
For questions or feedback on the podcast series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk
As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2024-03-12T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:28:44
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Charlotte Hartley
Guests: Peter Godolphin, David Fisher
Producer: Charlotte Hartley

UKCTOCS (UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening) is one of the largest screening trials in ovarian cancer. More than 200,000 women from England, Wales and Northern Ireland took part in it, and it ran for almost two decades. Designing and running such a large and lengthy trial came with its own challenges. In this episode, Professor Usha Menon discusses the key challenges that UKCTOCS faced in its design, conduct an analysis, and how the team addressed them.

Further information is available on the UKCTOCS website at ukctocs.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk

Listen to the episode about the UKCTOCS trial results at bit.ly/48pK94J

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/45XRyWT

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2023-11-23T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:26:57
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Berta Terre-Torras
Guests: Usha Menon
Producer: Berta Terre-Torras

In the first episode of our new Trial Talk series, Hanif Esmail and Conor Tweed take over the microphones to interview Andrew Nunn and Sarah Meredith, who have both recently retired from the Unit, having spent a combined total of 92 years working in the field of tuberculosis (TB). As we celebrate Andrew and Sarah’s long and accomplished careers, we’ll dive into the history of TB clinical trials and muse on the future of TB research.

For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-stories/2024/january/new-podcast-episode-careers-in-tb-clinical-trials

Check out our earlier podcast episodes about TB trials, also featuring Andrew Nunn:
• Trial-talk-podcast – The-stream2-trial-how-should-we-treat-multi-drug-resistant-tuberculosis
• Trial-talk-podcast – Andrew-nunn-talks-medical-statistics-tb-and-algerian-nomads-part-1
• Trial-talk-podcast – Andrew-nunn-talks-medical-statistics-tb-and-algerian-nomads-part-2

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2024-01-26T00:00:00Z
Duration: 28:56
Language of episode: English
Presenters: Charlotte Hartley, Hanif Esmail, Conor Tweed
Guests: Andrew Nunn, Sarah Meredith
Producer: Charlotte Hartley

The Trial Talk podcast explores how our work at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL is improving health in the UK and worldwide. In this new series, we will hear from world-leading experts about the studies we carry out. We delve into trials on cancer, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases, explore how public and patient involvement shapes our work, and discover new ways to run smarter studies.

Every year on 1st December, we mark World AIDS Day to show solidarity in the fight against HIV and AIDS, and to remember those who have sadly lost their lives. Since the start of the global AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, researchers have made enormous progress towards preventing HIV transmission, and treating those who are living with HIV so that the virus remains suppressed. But while there have been marked improvements for adults, treatment coverage in children and adolescents is lagging behind. In the second of our World AIDS Day episodes, we highlight the important role that young people living with HIV play in research, by shaping clinical trials to better serve the needs of their community. This episode features Lungile Jafta, who works closely with young people through Penta’s youth engagement programmes, and Gugu, a former Youth Trials Board member from South Africa who is living with HIV.

For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-stories/2023/december/trial-talk-podcast-releases-new-episodes-for-world-aids-day/

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2023-12-01
Duration: 00:19:01
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Charlotte Hartley
Guests: Lungile Jafta, Gugu (former Youth Trials Board member)
Producer: Charlotte Hartley

Every year on 1st December, we mark World AIDS Day to show solidarity in the fight against HIV and AIDS, and to remember those who have sadly lost their lives. Since the start of the global AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, researchers have made enormous progress towards preventing HIV transmission, and treating those who are living with HIV so that the virus remains suppressed. But while there have been marked improvements for adults, treatment coverage in children and adolescents is lagging behind. In the first of our World AIDS Day episodes, Dr Anna Turkova, Clinical Principal Research Fellow at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, and Philippa Musoke, Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at Makerere University, explore the reasons for these disparities and how the MRC CTU at UCL is working to close the gap between adults and children through clinical trials.

For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-stories/2023/december/trial-talk-podcast-releases-new-episodes-for-world-aids-day/

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at mrcctu.engage@ucl.ac.uk

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2023-12-01
Duration: 00:24:04
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Charlotte Hartley
Guests: Anna Turkova, Philippa Musoke
Producer: Charlotte Hartley