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Clinical Trial Search Tool

The Gist

This tool will help you narrow down your choice of rare kidney cancer clinical trials listed on clinicaltrials.gov in a short period of time using only 'clicks'.

Initially, all text is 'selectable' (displayed in black. e.g. 'Birt-Hogg'). Clicking on selectable text 'selects' it. (displaying it in in bold. e.g. 'Birt-Hogg'). Once you select something, most likely other items will become incompatible with that selection. The tool 'eliminates' such items. In long lists, eliminated items disappear. (e.g. most states disappear if you select 'Birt-Hogg'). In short lists, 'eliminated' items are shown explicitly. (displayed in gray font. e.g. 'Collecting Duct') 'Eliminated' items can be selected as well. This produces a 'contradiction' (displayed in red 'strike through' font. e.g. 'Collecting Duct'). This means that there is no trial which meets all the selected criteria. 'Contradictions' can be removed by clicking them. This removes the selection and the item is again displayed as eliminated.

Some lists are quite long. For example 'Facilities' has 3800 items. You can scroll through the items or use the 'autocomplete' 'box above the list to search through the list's contents via entered text.

Some list entries have link beside them (e.g. NCT_id, the Clinical Trial ID). Clicking the link will take you to the clinicaltrial.gov description of the clinical trial.

Note that all the data comes directly from clinicaltrials.gov. As such, it is LIMITED by how the researchers entered their data. In particular, researchers may use the term "non clear cell" instead of "papillary", even if their trial admits papillary patients.

Some Detail

This tool interrelates 400 interventions, 1600 keywords and 3800 facilities. It will take several seconds to load.

A newcomer to clinical trials is unlikely to know all the important categories in a clinical trial (Phase, Condition, Interventions (e.g. 'Drugs'), Keywords, etc.). So we list them explicitly.

A newcomer is also unlikely to know all the names of category members as well (Papillary, Chromophobe, Foretinib, Bevacizumab, etc.) So we list them ALL explicitly as well.

Unfortunately dealing with long lists is a pain, so we provide several mechanisms to help.

  1. 'show all' - if checked, all items are shown.  if unchecked, all eliminated items disappear.
  2. 'search' - an autocompletion field that searches all entries in the category. E.g. 'Facilities' contains 4000 or so entries. You can enter 'memorial sloan kettering' to see all the msk facilities participating in clinical trials. You can then slect an item from the drop down
  3. Hyperbolic text - the text changes size as you mouse over it. (This was removed from the clinicalTrials tool by popular demand.)

Tutorial

Let's illustrate tool features via an example.

  1. Click on Condition - 'Birt-Hogg'
    1. Notice that 'Birt-Hogg' is displayed in bold font. This means that it has been selected.
  2. Click on Condition - 'Birt-Hogg'
    1. Notice that 'Birt-Hogg' is displayed in plain black font. This means that it has been de-selected.
  3. Click on Condition - 'Birt-Hogg'
    1. 'Birt-Hogg' is again displayed in bold font since it has been re-selected.
    2. Notice that 'Collecting Duct' is displayed in gray font. This means that it has been eliminated, i.e. that there are no clinical trials that are treating both 'Birt-Hogg' and 'Collecting Duct'.
    3. However, there are trials that treat both 'Birt-Hogg' and 'Chromophobe'. That is why 'Chromophobe' is still in plain black.
  4. Click on Condition - 'Chromophobe'
    1. Notice that 'Chromophobe' is now displayed in bold font. This means that it has been selected.
    2. Notice also that the number of clinical trial IDs displayed in the NCT_ID field has been reduced. (As before you can deselect and reselect 'Chromophobe' to notice this.) This means that there are fewer trials that treat both 'Birt-Hogg' and 'Chromophobe' than trials that treat 'Birt-Hogg' alone.
  5. Click on (eliminated) Condition - 'Collecting Duct'
    1. Notice that 'Chromophobe' is still displayed in plain black font, but 'Collecting Duct' and 'Birt-Hogg' are displayed in red 'strike through' font. That is because there are no clinical trials that are treating both 'Birt-Hogg' and 'Collecting Duct'.
  6. Click on Condition - 'Chromophobe' - deselecting it
  7. Look at the list of States
    1. One state, 'maryland', is still selectable.
    2. All others have disappeared since 'show all' is not selected.
    3. 'Maryland' is consistent with the facilities listed since 'national institutes of health clinical center' is in Bethesda Maryland.
  8. Look at the list of Drugs
    1. Note that all the drugs have also disappeared except everolimus.
    2. As such, it is likely that everolimus is the drug being used
  9. Look at the list of Clinical Trial IDs (NCT_id)
    1. NCT_id shows that there are several clinical trials dealing with Birt Hogg.
    2. Clicking on the 'link' entry to the left of the NCT_id takes you directly to the clinical trial description.
  10. Enter "foretinib" in the Intervention search field and click on the single dropdown entry.
    1. Under condition, we see that there is one condition that it is used for: papillary kidney cancer.
    2. It is being tested only in the US in one clinical trial in a handful of states.
  11. Enter "nib" (or "mab" or "olimus") in the Intervention search field and click on the single dropdown entry.
    1. These are three common suffixes for kidney cancer treatments. So these queries help you discover all the clinical trials using these treaments.