Window of opportunity clinical trial

Window of opportunity trials allow a drug (or other intervention) of interest to be given to a patient over a short period of time, usually 2–-4 weeks, prior to the instigation of standard therapy.

Window of opportunity clinical trial designs can provide early insight into the biological plausibility of a novel therapeutic strategy in the clinical setting. A variety of window-of-opportunity trial designs, which take into account the limited access to treated tissue and the challenges with obtaining pretreatment control tissues, have been used for the initial development of traditional and targeted small-molecule drugs and biologic therapies, including immunotherapies and oncolytic viral therapies. Early-stage development of glioma treatment should include a window-of-opportunity component whenever feasible ¹⁾.