Jennifer Diamond, MD, Named Medical Director of Cancer Clinical Trials Office

What are your duties as medical director of the Cancer Clinical Trials Office?

The medical director oversees the overall vision for the clinical trial portfolio and makes strategic decisions about the operations of the Cancer Clinical Trials Office. I'm paired with a director who does a lot of the administrative duties. As medical director, I liaise with the investigators, making sure we have the right trials open for the right patients.

One of our priorities is our collaborations with our partners at the University of Colorado and UCHealth University of Colorado hospital, working together to get our trials open more quickly and increase our enrollment.

Has anything changed in the CCTO since the first time you were in this role?

We have more momentum to open trials at our satellite sites, which are the other UCHealth clinics in the Metro Denver area, the ones up north in Fort Collins, and the ones down south in Colorado Springs.

What is the role of the CCTO in expanding access to clinical trials?

Part of our mission is to increase diversity in clinical trials accruals and to improve access to clinical trials for patients with cancer who may have geographical challenges. They may live far away from the trial site or have other challenges because they're in a rural area. We want to bring our clinical trials out to the community, but we also want to break down barriers to make it easier for patients to come into our center for clinical trials.

Are there any specific areas you're seeing investigators focus on in their trials?

It’s exciting, because we've been part of key clinical trials that have led to the approval of new highly effective cancer drugs across multiple tumor types. Now, we're moving into the next generation of immunotherapy agents. We're really excited about our capabilities to run cell therapy trials, which are next-generation immunotherapy studies with a tailored approach to harness the body's immune system to fight cancer, or to use engineered immune cells to fight cancer. That's the new horizon.

Are you mostly coordinating trials run by CU Cancer Center investigators, or do you also help coordinate our participation in national trials?

The Cancer Clinical Trials Office oversees a mix of trials, including trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, national cooperative group trials, and investigator-initiated trials, which are “homegrown” ideas from our researchers and investigators. The sponsor investigator of the trial is not only sponsoring the study, but also conducting it. 

Do you have any other priorities as you return to the role of medical director?

Our priorities are to make sure we have trials available to our patients that include the most promising new therapies. We want to continue with our expertise in early-phase clinical trials, new drug development, and cell therapies.