Dr. Paul Kelly

So essentially, there is no comparative group in that trial.

Every patient who decides or puts their trust in us to enter into this trial will receive the experimental treatment.

But there are also comparative trials where, as you say, we have a control arm.

But often one of the issues with that is that those trials have to be very large to answer questions.

And also patients need to be followed in those trials for many, many years.

And they're extremely expensive to run.

But, you know, as a technologist yourself, Johnson, AI and modern technology is coming to our aid.

And trial design is also something that's going to change rapidly over the next few years to help us answer these questions.

And I suppose trials have always been done kind of in academic centres.

They've required lots of visits for patients.

And really, you know, a kind of more decentralised oncology trial is going to become easier

more involved, that would reduce the burden on patients, really, in terms of their ability to do things remotely, whether that's visits, home blood collections, wearable monitoring, telemedicine follow-up.

You know, these things are definitely, you know, going to help.

But in terms of the control arm, there's even the idea, this idea now of an AI-generated, what's called a digital twin.

So within a trial before, you know, one person was put into the experimental arm, one person was put into the standard treatment, and they were followed for many, many years to decide ultimately whether there was a difference at the end of the day.

But

Yeah, we can now actually even potentially generate an AI digital twin for the person so that we don't potentially have to randomize someone to a control arm.

So a bit like everything else in technology, you know, this is really going to advance how we do clinical trials.

And there's a very much a trend of incorporating, you know, emerging technology into clinical trials.

Well, I'm really glad you brought that up because I suppose most people, when they think of cancer, clinical trials, they may be thinking about drug trials.