Renal-cell carcinoma--molecular pathways and therapies.

n engl j med 356;2 www.nejm.org january 11, 2007 185 We urge investigators, including those who receive funding from the National Institutes of Health or other nonindustry sources, to ensure that the studies they conduct are registered with complete information and to check the registration records for accuracy. Specific information about how to register a study in ClinicalTrials.gov can be found at http://prsinfo.clinicaltrials.gov and is described in a recent article.3 Investigators should avoid participating in trials if they are not confident that an accurate and complete record of the trial will be maintained in an acceptable trials registry. The sunitinib study is a case in which the willingness of one of the investigators to disclose key information about the protocol allowed a study to be considered for publication by one of the many medical journals that adhere to the ICMJE trials-registration policy. The message should be clear to all investigators participating in clinical trials: before you enroll a patient in a study, be sure that there is a full and appropriate registration of the trial in a public database approved by the ICMJE (www.icmje.org). It could salvage a study report that otherwise would not be published.