Chief Fellow Dr. Ryan Nyugen discussed findings of his health disparities research with OncLive, noting that across all tumor types, Black patients were less than one-third as likely to be enrolled in a clinical trial compared with white patients.
Hispanic patients were less than half as likely to be enrolled compared with white patients. Additionally, in colorectal cancer and lung cancer clinical trials, females were less likely to enroll compared with males, Nguyen explained.
Notably, although elderly patients comprise a significant proportion of the cancer population in the United States, older individuals were underrepresented across clinical trials compared with younger patients. As such, findings from clinical trials that lead to FDA approvals of widely utilized therapeutic agents may not be generalizable to the overall oncology population, Nguyen said.