Research

• Develop, test and disseminate easy screening tools to enable proper referrals to multidisciplinary clinics and encourage integrated approaches between oncologists and geriatricians
• Create a clear and operational definition of vulnerability/frailty applicable to oncology
• Increase the relevance of clinical trials for older patients: require large phase III trials to oversample older cancer patients in order reach a meaningful percentage of their cohorts, and to structure their analysis to provide results specific and pertinent to this population; extend phase II and III trials to patients with high levels of comorbidity or functional impairment with stratified accruals or extension cohorts; design specific trials for older cancer patients and promote multidisciplinary, basic/translational research on the interface of aging and cancer.

On-going research projects

Remark: Some information on clinical trials in elderly cancer patients may be found in the EU Clinical Trials Register which was launched in March 2011 by the European Medicines Agency (EMA): now online.