Research in brief

Study of cancer trials finds significant safety improvement

The chance that patients participating in early-stage cancer research studies will die from the experimental treatments has dropped dramatically over the past decade, according to a study from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In an analysis of more than 200 Phase 1 research trials from 1991 through 2002, the researchers found that treatment-related deaths decreased by 90 percent during the study period. The report appears in the Nov. 3 Journal of the American Medical Association.

http://www.massgeneral.org/news/inthenews/index.html#nov2