Conclusion

In the United States, there is a growing reliance on industry to conduct cancer clinical research. Underinvestment in federally sponsored research comes at a cost for both patients and researchers, with lost opportunities for scientific, clinical, and population advances.

Our study demonstrates that the landscape of clinical cancer research in the United States is shifting toward one dominated by industry.

This has policy implications since industry sponsors focus predominantly on drug and biological agent interventions, whereas federally sponsored trials are more inclusive of different combinations of agents and modalities and are more oriented toward research questions important for a diverse population of patients.

These different models for cancer clinical research both serve vital functions in new treatment discovery and are, ultimately, complementary.

Nonetheless, an underinvestment to the main avenues for federally supported clinical research is occurring at a time when such research is greatly needed to perform the trials that industry will not do.

Thus, policymakers should aim to address the increasing imbalance between industry and federally funded cancer clinical research to benefit both researchers and patients in terms of scientific, clinical, and population advances.