How important are trails?

My brother is going to start his standart treatment radiation/small dose temodal and chemo afterwards in 1 1/2 week. The Bonner clinic tested if he could participate on their trail research program, unfortunelty his cells are not the right one therefore he can not attend their trail.

Would you look for other trail options? Do you need to change the clinic for standart treatment to do a different trail? Sorry I am sounding like a greenhorn.  I am in the learning stage of this desease options treatments.

Any advice is appriciated.

Clinical Trials: Check with the hospital or the government or national cancer society. Sorry, can't remember, is he in Germany? In the US there is www.virtualtrials.com just for brain cancer, and www.clinicaltrials.gov .

If you are here, I wonder whether a good and kind neuro-oncologist at a large brain tumor hospital or university research center might have any information about options in other countries.

Hope you find some help!
Sarah

Also, should have said, trials are where you participate in an experiment. Sometimes it's great because you have access to new meds, and it's paid for. Other times you are in a control group, or you are in the group given the standard meds when others get the new stuff. Something to be careful of. My mother is in a Multiple Myeloma trial and she is getting a very OLD drug. I was very disappointed on her behalf that she isn't getting the new one that has much more easily tolerated side effects!

Sarah

I agree with Sarah, sometimes trials can be a crapshoot and they are very cumbersome and time consuming, which affects your quality of life. Is there some reason his doctors think he won't benefit from the standard treatment he's being offered (temodar/radiation)? So many do so well on that regimen.

have you heard of the novocure trial.  They are getting pretty good results.  It has been approved in Italy, Switzerland and some other European countries.

http://www.novocuretrial.com/