Hello Lorraine, and thank you for posting. I am so sorry to hear about your son and I can understand you wanting to search for all potential treatments.

PARP inhibitors are used for certain cancers in the UK already, but I cannot see a trial at the moment for bowel cancers on our database.

We usually suggest that if people are interested in trials they discuss this with their specialist as they are often aware of trials that are going on.

We have information about taking part in trials and a clinical trials database on our website, which you can look at. This lists the trials that we are aware of and have permission to put on the website. These are the current open bowel trials.

Although our contact details are included on the website, the information nurses are not directly involved in running these trials or recruiting patients for a clinical trial.

Patients who wish to take part in almost all clinical trials must have a medical referral from their doctor to the doctor running the trial. If you see a trial on our database that you are interested in, you will need to discuss it with your own doctor or cancer specialist. We suggest you print off a copy of the information and take it along to your appointment.

All trials have very strict entry requirements. So you must match these to be able to take part. If it looks like an appropriate trial, your sons doctor can then send a referral to the doctor running the trial at your nearest participating centre.

Our trials database has the details of most of the current trials that we are aware of and have also had permission to include. But unfortunately, it isn't comprehensive as there may be trials we don't know about or haven't been allowed to include. The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has a database on their website called Be Part of Research.  There are other trial databases, such as the ISRCTN (International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number) registry and a US trials database called ClinicalTrials.gov, which lets you search by country,  but both of these feed into Be Part of Research.

I hope that this reply is helpful. Do contact us again if we can offer you any further information or support. You may find it helpful to talk things through with one of the nurses on our telephone service. The number to ring is freephone 0808 800 4040 and the lines are open from 9am till 5pm Monday to Friday.

Kind Regards,

Sarah.