Expanding the boundaries of medicine

Patients benefit from promising new treatments explored at Advocate Christ Medical Center

Right now, Advocate Christ Medical Center is participating in nearly 100 clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of promising new drugs and other therapies to prevent or cure serious diseases.

These trials, or studies, are the final steps in determining whether new drugs, surgical techniques or preventive measures are more effective and safer than current therapies. While there are risks associated with any new treatment, these trials are modern medicine’s only surefire way to know how humans will react to new advances in medicine. And for those patients who participate in them, clinical trials are a way to receive leading-edge treatment years before the drugs or therapies become generally available.

A careful comparison
There are three phases of clinical trials, according to cardiologist Mark Silver, M.D., who supervises Christ Medical Center’s participation in heart disease studies.

In Phase I of a drug study, for example, patients receive various levels of a new drug to determine the safest and most effective dose. “The Phase II trial is a larger study in which patients receive standard doses of the test drug while researchers monitor its effects,” Dr. Silver says.

Then a lengthy Phase III trial looks at results using the new drug compared to results from drugs already in use. Phase III trials can involve thousands of patients and be conducted at sites around the world.

Advocate Christ Medical Center’s role
Research teams at Christ Medical Center are exploring the newest breakthrough drugs and therapies in many areas such as cardiology, oncology, emergency medicine and general surgery, Dr. Silver explains. “Important Phase II and Phase III trials are under way for heart disease,” Dr. Silver notes, “including three new drug therapies for fighting congestive heart failure and two surgical procedures involving new arterial stents.”

Christ Medical Center is also participating in four breast cancer trials, including STAR, the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene, and new pre- and postoperative therapies. Additional trials for other types of cancer are also ongoing. In addition, William Ennis, D.O., director of the wound treatment program, is leading a study examining a new treatment for foot wounds in people with diabetes.

These clinical trials provide valuable information that can change the way diseases are treated. At the same time, those participating in the trials have access to the latest treatments. “These patients not only have an opportunity to access the newest medicines and therapies,” says Dr. Ennis, “they get to play a part in expanding the frontiers of medicine.”