Programs & Activities

PDQ® Cancer Clinical Trials Registry

The PDQ® (Physician Data Query) registry contains trial descriptions for more than 5,000 clinical trial protocols that are open/active and approved for patient accrual (accepting patients), as well as descriptions for more than 15,000 clinical trials that have been completed or are closed to patient accrual.

The PDQ® registry includes trials for cancer treatment, genetics, diagnosis, supportive care, screening, prevention, behavioral interventions, epidemiology, health services research, and biomarker and laboratory analysis. It is widely used by patients, health professionals providing cancer care, clinical researchers, and meta-analysts. Trials in the registry are searchable on the NCI Web site at http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/search.

In addition to the PDQ® clinical trials, the NCI Web site contains additional cancer information from the PDQ database that includes evidence-based cancer information summaries on cancer treatment, screening, prevention, genetics, supportive care, and complementary and alternative medicine; dictionaries of general cancer terms, drug terms, and genetics terms; and a directory of health professionals and organizations that provide genetic counseling services.

The NCI Liaison Office collects, submits and updates European cancer research protocols for inclusion in the PDQ® Registry. Researchers conducting cancer clinical trials in Europe are invited to submit their protocols to the NCI Liaison Office for inclusion in the PDQ® Registry.

There are many benefits to listing trials in NCI’s PDQ® Cancer Clinical Trials Registry, including:

• Trial information is accessible to a large international audience of cancer patients, caregivers, family members, and health professionals through the NCI Web site and through other clinical trial Web sites.
• NCI provides all clinical trial listings to the ClinicalTrials.gov registry and NCI will also provide investigators with the NCTID, the unique identifier for a trial in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry. This facilitates compliance with requirements from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors related to the trial registration.
• Investigators and their research teams do not need to write trial descriptions. Trained writers are available to create trial descriptions in a standardized manner, using guidelines for writing that ensure consistency among trial summaries.
• All PDQ® trial summaries are available in two versions on the NCI Web site. The patient version is written in non-technical language and is directed toward a lay audience. The health professional version is written in more technical language and is designed for medical professionals.

Although the Registry currently lists only English language protocols, it will accept protocols in French, German or Spanish provided a summary of the protocol is submitted with the protocol. Summaries provided in these languages will be translated by the NCI, and submitted to the protocol provider for review before being included in the PDQ® database.

Once a trial is listed in PDQ®, a designated update person will be contacted periodically for the update of status, participating sites, and scientific content of the trial.

Documents required for protocol submission:

• Complete protocol in English, or summary in French, German, or Spanish - guidelines for preparing a protocol summary (PDF, 121kb)
• Completed protocol submission checklist (DOC, 47kb)
• Participating Investigators List (DOC, 44kb)
• Published results of studies may also be submitted and will be linked to the trial on Cancer.gov

For further details about submitting a European trial to the PDQ® Registry, please feel free to contact the NCI Liaison Office PDQ Administrator by e-mail: nci.lo@eortc.be or phone +32-2-770.71.47 or 772.22.17

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