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“If you locked everybody in a room for a week, I think we could come up with something that everybody would be comfortable with,” said Blase Polite, MD, a co-author of the statement, and immediate past chair of ASCO’s government relations committee.

The immunotherapy agent, avelumab (Bavencio) is the first drug to receive approval to treat Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a rare form of skin cancer. Carrie Best was the first patient to enroll in a clinical trial of avelumab, the first to receive the drug for Merkel cell carcinoma, and the first to become cancer-free.

For women with ovarian cancer, the message is clear: participating in clinical trials, even early-phase ones, offers the best hope for better treatments, but efforts are urgently needed at every level to ensure that more of these research opportunities are available.