SWOG’s fall 2021 group meeting is next week, and I couldn’t be more excited. Well, I could  be, if we were in Chicago, but you can’t have everything. 

Check the group meeting microsite for all of the latest details. My video welcome to the meeting should be posted there any minute now. If you’re running late and have not yet registered for the meeting, do so now from here (I see roughly 1,000 of you have already registered).

Reviewing the individual session agendas reveals a treasure trove of educational and professional development opportunities. Here’s a sample:

  • An Oishi Symposium presentation on integrative medicine and clinical trials
     
  • A surgery committee talk that asks whether circulating tumor DNA is ready for use to direct therapy for colorectal cancer
     
  • A SWOG Latin America Initiative (SLAI) symposium that will give me a chance to introduce Dr. Mariana Chavez Mac Gregor, our new executive officer for international affairs, to a wider group of SLAI investigators 
     
  • Updates on developments in the Lung-MAP trial and on the activities of SWOG Clinical Trials Partnerships (SWOG CTP)
     
  • A TAKE ACTION series presentation and discussion, sponsored by our recruitment and retention committee, on ensuring health equity among Asian Americans in SWOG trials
     
  • An adolescent and young adult committee talk with the intriguing title “AYA PRO Library”

We also have Plenary I and Plenary II, both of which have truly outstanding speakers.

Our translational medicine plenary (Plenary I) will include a talk by Dr. George Thomas on modeling novel combination treatments for renal cell carcinoma – work funded in part by a SWOG/Hope Foundation Impact Award – as well as talks on TM in GI cancers and on incorporating biomarkers in SWOG immunotherapy trials.

Our general plenary (Plenary II) on Integrity and Ethical Behavior in Cancer Research will feature presentations and a panel discussion that will help inform our review and revision of SWOG’s policies on integrity and accountability.

Both plenaries will be hybrid events, with recorded presentations coupled with live Q&A sessions to which you can submit questions via Zoom’s chat feature.

Finally, since you can’t be in Chicago for the meeting (at least most of us can’t), we’ve made it easier to pretend you are by providing you a SWOG background complete with Chicago skyline to appear behind you in your Zoom and WebEx meetings. So now I can truthfully say, see many of you in (near?) Chicago next week!

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