The WHO global landscape of cancer clinical trials

Clinical trials are essential to advancing cancer control, yet access and participation remain unequal globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) established the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) to enable a complete view of interventional clinical research for all those involved in healthcare decision-making and to identify actionable goals to equitable participation at the global level. A review of 89,069 global cancer clinical trials registered in the WHO ICTRP between 1999 and December 2022 revealed a cancer clinical trial landscape dominated by high-income countries and focused on pharmacological interventions, with multinational collaboration limited to only 3% of recruiting trials. Several of the deadliest cancers, including liver, stomach, pancreas and cervical cancer, were consistently missing from the top most-studied cancer types, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia. In this Review, we summarize the key findings of the WHO global landscape review and discuss strategies to act on these data, which provide critical empirical evidence to inform policy, practice and investment decisions. This Review of the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform presents a snapshot of the global cancer trial landscape and provides critical empirical evidence to inform policy, practice and investment.