Member Highlight: Fred Hutch Cancer Center

In addition to being a key Lead Academic Participating Site (LAPS) enrolling patients to SWOG and other NCTN clinical trials, Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle is home to the core SWOG Statistics and Data Management Center (SDMC) grant. In fact, our SDMC settled at the Hutch before many of our members were even born.

An early SWOG history describes a “long and tortuous” selection process that resulted in the 1984 choice of the Hutch as home base for our statistical center. A nationwide request for applications brought in ten letters of intent, five applications, and two finalists, before the ultimate “selection of the clear leader, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.”

SWOG’s Statistical Center opened at the Hutch on October 1, 1984, under the leadership of new SWOG Group Statistician John J. Crowley, PhD. John would serve in that role with incredible distinction for 28 years, developing the SDMC into a center of excellence in cancer research biostatistics unsurpassed anywhere, and helping develop many of our key programs, like the SWOG Latin America Initiative.

Four decades later, the Hutch remains the home institution for the core NCI grant supporting our SDMC, although the Center itself has grown and is now co-located at both the Hutch and Cancer Research And Biostatistics, or CRAB (I’ve written before about our Stats Center). 

Today’s SDMC is led by Director and SWOG Group Statistician Michael LeBlanc, PhD, and Deputy Director Catherine Tangen, DrPH (here’s a great story on Drs. LeBlanc and Tangen – and the SDMC), and they and our other doctoral-level biostatisticians are on faculty at the Hutch. Most members of the SDMC’s statistical analysis team are also based at that institution.

As a LAPS member with SWOG, the Hutch and its component and affiliate institutions are home to roughly 200 member investigators and a similar number of oncology research professionals (ORPs) on the SWOG roster. 

SWOG site principal investigator for the Hutch is Evan Ya-Wen Yu, MD, with Maggie So, MPH, CCRP, as SWOG lead ORP.

Clinical trials are a key component of the Hutch’s mission, and as a member of the NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN), the institution enrolls intensively to trials across the network. In 2024, among SWOG’s 19 LAPS members, the Hutch ranked third in terms of SWOG-credited accruals to NCTN clinical trials. 

As an institution, the Fred Hutch celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Established by a Seattle surgeon as a “living memorial” to his brother, a major league baseball player who died of cancer at 45, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) opened in 1975 as one of eight new comprehensive centers authorized by the 1971 National Cancer Act. In 2025, it remains an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center.

Several years back, the FHCRC merged with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance to become simply Fred Hutch Cancer Center – frequently referred to as “the Fred Hutch,” or even just “the Hutch”.

Although this latest Hutch incarnation dropped the word “research” from its name, research remains central to its mission. The tag line on fredhutch.org says it all: “science meets care.”

In addition to our SDMC, the Hutch is home to number of other research centers. Prominent among these is HICOR – the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research – whose mission is to reduce the economic and human burden of cancer by improving prevention, detection, treatment, and survivorship services through cancer care delivery research.

HICOR is led by Dr. Scott Ramsey and co-led by Dr. Veena Shankaran, two investigators who are well-known at SWOG, in part as the leadership team that co-chairs our cancer care delivery committee. 

As an institution that is home base to SWOG’s SDMC, to a cadre of sites enrolling to SWOG clinical trials, and to some of SWOG’s most accomplished researchers, Fred Hutch Cancer Center is an essential – and unique – contributor in making SWOG SWOG.

It's now grant review season for all of us in the NCTN, and I just learned the Fred Hutch's LAPS application has earned a truly walk-on-water impact/priority score. No surprise there, but this lets me close by saying congratulations  (and a related “thanks”) to the entire Hutch team!