Trial Talk

Oct 31 2024 26 ep. 23 mins 4
Trial Talk Podcast artwork

The Trial Talk Podcast explores how our work at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL is improving health in the UK and worldwide. In this new series, we will hear from world-leading experts about the studies we carry out. We will get inside trials on cancer, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases, explore how public and patient involvement is shaping our studies, and discover new ways to run smarter studies.

  Education  Health & Fitness
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Episode 8: International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference 2024 roundup - Early Careers Edition

Oct 31 2024 25 mins  
At the start of October, lots of the Unit’s clinical trials methodology researchers travelled to Edinburgh, for the 7th International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference (ICTMC). ICTMC is the largest academic-led conference on clinical trials, bringing together trialists from across the globe to present their latest work in trials methodology. This year's conference featured a

Episode 7: Preventing multidrug-resistant tuberculosis

Sep 25 2024 32 mins  
In September 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new guidance on preventative treatment for tuberculosis (TB). Thanks to new evidence from two randomised controlled clinical trials, the WHO now recommends that contacts of people with multidrug-resistant TB take six months of daily levofloxacin. In this episode of the Trial Talk podcast, we find out more about the TB-

Episode 6: The OPTIC study: Patient views on optimising immunotherapy in cancer

Jul 01 2024 25 mins  
Optimisation immunotherapy clinical trials investigate ways of reducing the intensity of immunotherapy cancer treatment. This could be beneficial for patients’ quality of life. But these trials can be challenging to run, as patients may be concerned about the impact that reducing the intensity of treatment could have on the cancer.This episode of the Trial Talk podcast focuses on

Episode 5: Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in clinical trials

Jun 04 2024 34 mins  
The MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL is committed to actively involving patients and the public in our trials. All our Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) work is overseen by our PPI Group, made up of MRC CTU staff alongside seven patient representatives, with a wide range of experience in different areas. In this episode of the Trial Talk podcast, two members of the Unit’s PPI G

Episode 4: Estimands - Answering the right research questions

Apr 26 2024 21 mins  
An estimand is a description of the research question a trial seeks to answer, which can help researchers better understand how their study should be designed and analysed. Estimands also provide a clear way to communicate treatment effects to different stakeholders. This episode of the Trial Talk podcast features Principal Research Fellow Brennan Kahan, exploring how triallists co

Episode 3: Subgroup analysis - Who benefits most from a treatment?

Mar 14 2024 28 mins  
Clinical trial results usually tell us how effective a treatment was on average for the overall group of participants, but a key question for clinicians, patients and policy makers is: which individual patients benefit most from the treatment and which don’t benefit as much? In the latest episode of the Trial Talk podcast, Peter Godolphin and David Fisher discuss a new method for

Episode 2: Lessons from UKCTOCS, a large-scale trial in ovarian cancer screening

Feb 12 2024 26 mins  
UKCTOCS (UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening) is one of the largest screening trials in ovarian cancer. More than 200,000 women from England, Wales and Northern Ireland took part in it, and it ran for almost two decades. Designing and running such a large and lengthy trial came with its own challenges. In this episode, Professor Usha Menon discusses the key challenge

Episode 1: Careers in TB trials with Andrew Nunn and Sarah Meredith

Feb 01 2024 28 mins  
In the first episode of our new Trial Talk series, Hanif Esmail and Conor Tweed take over the microphones to interview Andrew Nunn and Sarah Meredith, who have both recently retired from the Unit, having spent a combined total of 92 years working in the field of tuberculosis (TB). As we celebrate Andrew and Sarah’s long and accomplished careers, we’ll dive into the history of T

Episode 10 (part 2): World AIDS Day: Bringing hope through research to young people living with HIV with Lungile Jafta and Gugu

Dec 04 2023 19 mins  
Every year on 1st December, we mark World AIDS Day to show solidarity in the fight against HIV and AIDS, and to remember those who have sadly lost their lives. Since the start of the global AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, researchers have made enormous progress towards preventing HIV transmission, and treating those who are living with HIV so that the virus remains suppressed. But whil

Episode 10 (part 1): World AIDS Day: Closing the gap between adults and children with Anna Turkova and Philippa Musoke

Dec 04 2023 24 mins  
Every year on 1st December, we mark World AIDS Day to show solidarity in the fight against HIV and AIDS, and to remember those who have sadly lost their lives. Since the start of the global AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, researchers have made enormous progress towards preventing HIV transmission, and treating those who are living with HIV so that the virus remains suppressed. But whil