The Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP) is an outreach program that gives cancer patients the opportunity to choose the best cancer treatment in their own community. It is one of only 59 such programs recognized throughout the country by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute. With this recognition, comes a requirement to maintain high ethical and service standards, and to prove these standards at regular intervals. The CCOP is an organized clinical trial system through which the newest cancer treatments are made available to patients, thereby contributing to current cancer research efforts. Through the CCOP, physicians are exposed to cutting-edge information at national meetings, and may participate in the design of new trials.


The idea for the CCOP started approximately 15 years ago when the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute recognized that most cancer patients were being treated in their own communities and not at the major university centers that received most of the cancer research funding.


The CCOP at Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida participates in a variety of National Cancer Institute studies, including hormonal therapy and chemotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer, and chemotherapy in the treatment of bowel cancer, studies of active intervention in patients at risk for cancer, studies involving new drugs and treatment regimens in all types of cancers, studies using monoclonal antibodies, a biological type of treatment for cancer, and other novel therapies.


The CCOP brought to South Florida two very important studies to determine whether active intervention with drugs can decrease the incidence of cancer in people who are at risk. The Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, which included 200 participants at Mount Sinai, is one such study. The Breast Cancer Prevention Trial included 130 participants and was successfully concluded due to the discovery that the drug tamoxifen had a significant effect in the prevention of breast cancer. The CCOP will also participate in the next Breast Cancer Prevention Trial, which is scheduled to start in early 1999. This study will compare the effectiveness of two different drugs in the prevention of breast cancer.

Since its inception twelve years ago, the Mount Sinai CCOP has participated in major nationwide studies and has entered over 1,000 patients in cancer treatment and prevention studies. The successes have included:
 Proving the effectiveness of hormonal therapy and chemotherapy in treating breast cancer and chemotherapy in treating colon cancer.
 Helping define the optimal treatments for leukemia and lymphomas.
 Proving the effectiveness of the drugs Taxol and Taxotere.
 Proving the value of new drugs in treating rare diseases such as hairy cell leukemia.


Physicians within the CCOP network refer patients to the main CCOP office at MSMC via a telephone call or personal contact. One of the CCOP clinical staff will speak with the physician making the referral and discuss the eligibility of the participant, and the protocol requirements. Information about the status of protocols is updated monthly, and made available through protocol cards given to each participating physician, and through the bimonthly CCOP newsletter.