Many people often wonder what it takes to transform scientific discoveries into medical treatments. This whole process is a complicated one, which includes lots of tests for the new treatment and lots of experiments to make sure that it is safe and effective. When it comes to the stage where it’s tested on people, you’d be surprised to find out how many possible new, innovative, clinical trials fail – they’re not safe or effective.
About basic research:
This one talks about how living organisms work and the factors that can lead to a disastrous endgame. This is why they do a lot of experiments in the lab – scientists underlie critical medical discoveries. Ever scientists should follow a scientific method, often a process that gives more details about an objective manner. This first part of the method includes asking questions, doing some background research, write a hypothesis and an answer to those questions. Then, in the second part of the method, scientists have to test the hypothesis to prove or to disprove it, analyze the outcome and draw the conclusions.
Sometimes this method gets difficult, and scientists want to redo and repeat some of the steps. It’s a thing to note the fact that they don’t usually follow the order, so the method is considered to be a general principle.
There is a crucial part of the research process – replication and peer review. Scientists talk about their work with other experts, outside ones, often by publishing their methods in peer-reviewed journals. Sometimes, other scientists replicate the same steps of other scientists, just to come to the same outcomes. This way, scientists can collaborate with them when it comes to their discoveries.
About preclinical research:
This is the next stage to follow after the basic research. This one has to do with the actual translation from scientific knowledge to potential treatments.
They do tests on animals and sometimes on lab-grsown animal tissues or human tissues. Some may work on animals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are also going to work on humans. This is why clinical trials are an important factor to the development of medical science.
About clinical research:
If the preclinical research has good results, they can go next to clinical research or even test on humans.
Clinical trials start with a small group of people, and they’re testing safety. After the whole procedures are carefully evaluated, the number of people may increase, and the effectiveness of the treatment is carefully examined. If we’re talking about a rare condition or a problematic surgery technique, most scientists go for two people from the outside of the clinical trial.
Scientists have to protect the rights of the patient. He always has to come. First, his safety being number one priority. Before starting a clinical trial, a group of people is asked to review the whole situation. They’re called Institutional Review Boards, and they take into account all the factors of this process.
Source: Globex