24 Jun 2010
A SINGAPORE-LED, large-scale clinical trial on the treatment of advanced liver cancer has probably broken the record for being the most moneyed.
The trial will be fuelled by about $10.2 million – a lump-sum gift of $8.5 million from Australian medical device company Sirtex Medical, and $1.65 million, to be disbursed over five years, from the National Medical Research Council.
Associate Professor Pierce Chow, the principal investigator on the team, has declared the funding as "one of the biggest" for a trial initiated by researchers.
He is a senior clinician-scientist with Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and a visiting consultant at the National Cancer Centre (NCC).
He and his team of medical sleuths aim to find out which of two drugs – sorafenib or SIR-Spheres – should be the first-line drug, and which the second-line, for patients with liver cancers too advanced for them to be operated on or given liver transplants.
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