This Saturday marks International Clinical Trials Day. Around the world, people will be celebrating the anniversary of James Lind, carrying out the first randomised clinical trial, aboard a ship, on 20 May 1747. International Clinical Trials Day helps to raise awareness of clinical trials, and honours clinical research professionals and trial participants, by recognising their contribution to public health and medical progress.

Clinical trials are an important way for researchers to test new treatments, improve current treatments, and find different ways to control and prevent disease, such as cancer. Many people’s lives are the better as a consequence of the work undertaken through clinical trials. The experimental cancer medicine centre in Cardiff pioneers early-phase experimental treatments, giving Welsh patients access to novel therapies before they are available as standard care. And late-phase clinical trials into better, kinder treatments for cancers are being carried out at Velindre Cancer Centre. These trials may change clinical practice in the future. The Wales Cancer Partnership will also be highlighting our trial heroes in Wales, through an open afternoon this Friday at Velindre clinical trials unit, and at the concourse of the University Hospital of Wales.

I hope we can all pay tribute on Saturday to the amazing, groundbreaking work of Wales’s leading researchers and scientists, who play a vital role in bringing research out of the lab and into the lives of people, and celebrate the clinical participants in Wales who are changing the future for millions of people.