Philadelphia and
Pittsburgh, PA- The Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) and the
National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) have announced
their intent to join together to conduct oncology research and apply for
National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding as a collaborative alliance. Both RTOG
and NSABP are National Cancer Institute-funded cooperative oncology groups.
“NCI has
described its plan to support no more than four adult cancer cooperative groups
as of January 2014. Given this scenario, the two groups believe it is in the
mutual best interests of the groups and for cancer patients to form an alliance
which will ultimately constitute one of these funded cooperative groups,” said
Walter J. Curran, Jr., M.D., the RTOG Group Chair and the Executive Director of
the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. “Many of the details of
this alliance will be developed in order to improve clinical trials and respond
to NCI’s funding opportunity application (FOA) anticipated to be released
within the next 18 months.”
According to
Norman Wolmark, M.D., the NSABP Group Chair and Director of Oncology at West
Penn Allegheny Health System, “NSABP with its internationally renowned research
for patients with or at risk for breast and colorectal cancer and RTOG with its
outstanding research portfolio for patients with brain tumors, digestive and
respiratory cancers, and prostate cancer, complement each other in many
ways. Our two groups have worked in a truly collaborative and
complementary manner on a large phase 3 trial testing partial breast
irradiation for women with early stage breast cancer (NSABP-B39/RTOG-0413) and
are developing a joint phase 2 trial for women with breast cancer. We are
confident that our new alliance will create a cancer research organization that
is even stronger than the sum of the two existing organizations.”
Representatives
of the two groups have already met and have formed a transition team. The
groups have agreed to structure the new leadership and governance structure in
a manner which is efficient for the function of the new alliance and respectful
of the culture of each of the existing cooperative groups.
Both Drs. Wolmark
and Curran emphasized that the NSABP and RTOG will seek every opportunity to
create optimal synergies between the strengths of each organization and to
leverage the strengths of both groups into a robust cancer research enterprise.
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