Clinical/Treatment Trials

Are you interested in participating in a clinical trial?

The UNC Kidney Center welcomes self- and provider-referred participants depending on the nature of the study. You can view UNC Kidney Center studies at Research for Me or trials from across the country for nephrotic syndrome at Kidney Health Gateway.

What is a Clinical Trial?

In clinical trials, researchers test new ways to prevent, detect, or treat disease. Treatments might be new drugs or combinations of drugs, new surgical procedures or devices, or new ways to use existing treatments. Clinical trials can also test other aspects of care, such as ways to improve the quality of life for people with chronic illnesses.

A well-designed clinical trial is the gold standard for proving that a treatment or medical approach works, but clinical trials can’t always be used. For example, scientists can’t randomly assign people to live in different places, or ask people to start smoking or eating an unhealthy diet. Clinical trials are conducted in phases:

Phase I: Find out whether a medical approach (e.g., drug, diagnostic test, device) is safe, identify side effects, and figure out appropriate doses. Typically fewer than 100 subjects.

Phase II: Start testing whether a medical approach works. Continue monitoring for side effects; get information that goes into designing a large, phase III trial. Typically 100-300 subjects.

Phase III: Prove whether a medical approach works; continue monitoring side effects. May enroll as many subjects as needed – can be 1,000 or more.

Phase IV: When a medical approach is being marketed, continue gathering information on its effects. May enroll thousands of subjects.

More Information for Providers

Click here for a list of all our actively enrolling studies (interventional + non-interventional) with basic inclusion/exclusion criteria, and contact info.