Clinical Trials Reporting Program
Overview of CTRP
NCI Clinical Trials Reporting Program (CTRP) maintains a comprehensive database of information on all interventional clinical trials directly and indirectly funded by NCI, open to accrual as of January 1, 2009 as well as observational studies open to accrual as of January 1, 2020. This database helps identify gaps and duplicate studies in clinical research, facilitates clinical trial prioritization, and standardizes trial data capture and sharing.
Key benefits of CTRP include:
- Standardized abstraction of protocol information
- Consistent terminology and coding to optimize search and retrieval of cancer trials information
- Structured biomarker data
- Patient-level accrual data
- Standardized person and organization data elements
Definition of Trials Directly and/or Indirectly Funded by NCI
Trials directly or indirectly funded by NCI have some degree of financial support by NCI. These include:
- All National trials (e.g., NCTN, ETCTN, NCORP)
- All trials conducted at an NCI-Designated Cancer Center (with P30 center core grant), including all industrial trials
- Trials conducted under any type of contract, grant, or cooperative agreement supported by the NCI (e.g., R01, N01, SPORE, P01, U01, U10)
Use of Clinical Trial Information
All publicly available CTRP clinical trial information is made available through an application programming interface (API), which populates the clinical trials search feature on Cancer.gov. Information about the API can be found at https://clinicaltrialsapi.cancer.gov.
Staff from NCI-Designated Cancer Centers and other grantees can log in to CTRP and perform searches on trials they have submitted. If a center requires a more detailed report on their trials, they may submit a request via the Clinical Trials Reporting Office (CTRO, ncictro@mail.nih.gov) and a CTRP analyst will work with them to generate a custom report.
Origin of CTRP
CTRP was established in response to a recommendation made by the NCI Clinical Trials Working Group (CTWG) to the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB).
Key conclusions of the 2005 CTWG report:
- NCI had no electronic database that captured all cancer clinical trials directly or indirectly funded by NCI and their accrual
- Trials funded by R01s, R21s, P01s, SPORE grants and institutionally-supported trials using NCI-funded Cancer Center infrastructure resources (P30) were particularly difficult to identify
- Available databases did not allow NCI and the broader cancer community to monitor accrual, identify gaps and duplicative trials and prioritize the development of new clinical trials.
In 2015, the Clinical Trials Informatics Working Group (CTIWG) of the NCI Clinical Trials and Translational Research Advisory Committee (CTAC) was formed to advise the NCI on refining CTRP as a clinical trials portfolio management resource. The CTIWG report was accepted by CTAC in November 2017.