ECMC clinical trials

ECMC stands for Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre. ECMC status has been awarded to 19 centres in the UK that are specialist centres doing lots of research into new cancer treatments. The aim is to bring together cancer doctors, research nurses and lab scientists to make clinical trials of new treatments quicker and easier.

The ECMC initiative is funded by Cancer Research UK and the Departments of Health of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They are giving a total of £35 million pounds over 5 years to the 19 centres. The centres will use this money to run trials of new and experimental treatments. They will also analyse thousands of blood and tissue samples (biopsies) to help find out more about how treatments work and what happens to cancer cells.

There is more information about the network and the sort of research the centres are doing on the ECMC website. But please bear in mind the website is aimed at scientists rather than members of the public.

An ECMC trial is an early phase trial running at one the 19 centres using money provided by the ECMC funders. They are mostly small phase 1 trials and phase 2 trials of new treatments.

The CancerHelp UK team are working closely with the centres to provide information about ECMC trials on our clinical trials database. We don’t have information on every ECMC trial on our database yet, but we are working hard to get as many as possible on the site. We aim to include all ECMC trials that are recruiting patients as soon as we can.

There are two ways to search on our clinical trials database.

The first is the quick search where you simply pick the cancer type you are interested in from the drop down list. This gives you all trials for your cancer type on the database. Many trials looking at experimental treatments recruit people with different types of cancer rather than just one. We inlcude these trials in the 'all types of cancer' category rather than under each indivual cancer type.

The second is the advanced search. You can select things such as the phase of trial and a town or city, as well as the cancer type.

Please bear in mind that the CancerHelp UK database includes a large variety of UK cancer trials funded by lots of different people, not just ECMC trials. So not all the trials you see in the search results will be ECMC trials.

We have information about the anti CD40 'Chilob' study that was mentioned in the papers recently on our database. This trial is still recruiting patients but it is only recruiting a small number of people and is due to close very soon. So it is unlikely that you will be able to take part.

All trials have eligibility criteria that you must meet to be able to take part. These include things such as the type of cancer, stage of cancer, previous treatments and other medical conditions. Each trial on the CancerHelp UK database includes a summary of the criteria.

If you see a trial that you are interested in on our database, you should print out a copy of the information and take it to your own doctor. You and your doctor can then discuss whether you may be able to take part or not. You need a medical referral to take part in a clinical trial. This means that if the trial looks suitable for you, your doctor needs to contact a doctor involved with the trial and ask if you can take part. This is true whether the trial is an ECMC trial or not.

Each trial also includes the Cancer Research UK Information Nurses contact details. The information nurse team are not directly involved with the trial and can’t recruit you, but you can contact them if you have any general questions about taking part in a trial. Or if your doctor would like to know your nearest centre for a specific trial so they can refer you. You can contact the nurses by phone on 020 7061 8355 or 0808 800 4040 (freephone), or using the send us a question form on CancerHelp UK.