Most advanced breast cancer patients treated in community settings, Phesi study finds
pharmafile | October 26, 2026 | News story | | Oncology, breast cancer, clinical trials, community healthcare, oncology
Most patients with advanced hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative (HR+/HER2-) breast cancer are treated in community settings rather than academic centres, potentially limiting their access to clinical trials, according to an analysis by Phesi.
The company analysed 47,011 patients through its Trial Accelerator platform and found that 85% were seen in community practice, compared with 15% in academic centres.
The findings come alongside a separate 2024 US analysis showing that community programmes had the lowest treatment-trial enrolment rate across all cancer types, at 4.1%, compared with 7.1% overall. Although the figures cover different patient populations, Phesi argues that clinical development needs to reach beyond academic research centres if trials are to reflect where patients receive care.
“[Clinical development programmes must] adapt and research [must] follow patients into community clinics,” said Dr Gen Li, Chief Executive Officer of Phesi. “If this doesn’t happen, new treatments will be slower to reach patients in need.”
The company said trial sponsors could use patient data to identify investigator sites with access to eligible participants, including community clinics. It noted that care settings vary by breast cancer subtype, with HR-positive patients more commonly treated in community hospitals and a higher proportion of patients with triple-negative breast cancer treated in academic hospitals.
Phesi also cited growing emphasis on US representation in global cancer trials, putting the working benchmark at 20% to 40% of participants in registrational studies, although it described this as an informal expectation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) citing a recent study.
The company’s Trial Accelerator platform draws on data from 379 million patients across 232 countries and territories, including registries, clinical trials, observational studies and real-world datasets.
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