I have made some progress on the trial I was interested in. The contact listed on clinicaltrials.gov, which is a big CRO (so vacations and ASCO aren't issues), never responded to my emails or my voicemails, despite the fact that they claim to respond within 2 hours and by 5 PM if you leave a voice message by 3 PM. False, and false. The contact at the hospital never responded to my email either.

So I sent an email to the drug company and then called them the next day. The woman who answered the phone said neither of their trials were recruiting. 15 min later someone responded to my email and said the trial site near me was recruiting and that I should email the principal investigator. When I emailed him, I got his out-of-office message saying he was at ASCO, but 20 min later he sent me a very enthusiastic email, copied to all the appropriate people. I met with him and his team of very eager associates yesterday. (They were trying to sell me on a CAR-T trial too. No.). Now I need to have some labs and tests to make sure I meet the requirements for the trial. But I probably will, and will probably start July 1.

I think the main problem is out of date contact information. The contact at the hospital seems to have moved to a different position (although she's still there and could have forwarded my email.). The CRO may also no longer be organizing this trial, but, likewise, they could have just told me that. But nobody can be bothered.

I also emailed my current hospital regarding a trial other than the one my team had offered. No response. So this isn't an isolated problem.

I did call the NCI, which has a service to help you select clinical trials. That might be of some use, but they have the same contact information listed on clinical trials.gov, so they're not much use if you can't get in touch.