Stopping the trial of a promising cancer drug early often means that more patients will be able to reap the benefits, but could there be commercial pressure from pharmaceutical companies to exaggerate the true benefits of the drug? That’s the concern after an analysis of 25 cancer drug trials over the past 11 years suggested a growing trend for trials to be stopped early because they suggested a strong benefit to patients being given the drug. Others say that better designed clinical trials are identifying the benefits of drugs at an earlier stage. Giovanni Apolone at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, Italy, looked at trials conducted between 1997 and 2007, which had been stopped after an interim analysis of the data.
