Fall Group Meeting: The More Things Change …

In reflecting on the upcoming changing of the guard, and on the progress we’ve made since the last changing of the guard, we’ve planned a powerhouse plenary you won’t want to miss. It will include talks on the progress of oncology research, on using artificial intelligence to accelerate cancer advances, on work to reverse immunotherapy resistance in small cell lung cancer, and on the evolution of our cooperative group system and the NCI National Clinical Trials Network. It takes place Friday, 2 – 4 pm CT.

There are plenty of other great reasons to attend in Chicago next week as well, in-person or virtually. Here are just a few. 

• First thing Thursday morning, our Leadership Council on Representation will hold an open forum They have a keynote speaker from the NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences on language strategies for broadening membership and trial participation. 
   
• Also on Thursday, our NCORP Research Base Clinical Trials Workshop can help your site be more successful in conducting NCORP studies. The presentation portion includes a virtual attendance option, but the breakout sessions are in-person only. 
   
• We’ll hold two trial kickoff sessions this fall. One will launch the S2427 BRIGHT Trial in muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), which activated just last week. This trial asks whether, when MIBC responds completely to neoadjuvant therapy, subsequent radiation plus immunotherapy can help patients avoid cystectomy and keep their bladder.  
   
• Our other kickoff session is for the Triple Switch Trial, CCTG-PR.26, a joint study of SWOG and the Canadian Cancer Trials Group. This phase III is enrolling patients with metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer that shows a suboptimal PSA (prostate-specific antigen) response after 6 to 12 months of standard treatment. Attend the kickoff to learn the details.
   
• As a follow-up to the highly successful Geriatric Oncology Symposium at our spring meeting, the same team will hold a hands-on workshop covering the principles and application of geriatric assessment in the context of cancer clinical trials. Note that this session is in-person only, and as of this writing, it still has a few spots open (if you haven’t registered for it yet, you’ll need to do that in-person when you get to Chicago next week).  
   
• Our Take Action Symposium this fall will address the challenges of bringing clinical research opportunities to patients in rural communities. 
   
• Check out the Lung-MAP Update Forum on Friday to get insight into the progress of Lung-MAP 3.0, the recent major revision of our master protocol to make it easier to open and enroll to.
   
• Thursday’s SWOG Clinical Trials Partnerships (SWOG CTP) Update Forum will have lots of exciting news to report, including the activation of CTP’s second clinical trial – the CAPT-HN trial (21CTP.HN01) in head and neck cancer (CAPT-HN is set to activate on Monday). 
   
• On Saturday, the theme of our SWOG Latin America Initiative Symposium will be international collaboration on breast cancer research.

Plenty more is also on the schedule, all of which you can find in the online agenda book and/or the fall meeting app.

If you can’t be in Chicago next week physically, remember that most open sessions will also be accessible virtually (though the world’s greatest pizza will not be). Zoom links are in our meeting app and the session details page. 

I’m looking forward to seeing you there!!
 

Next Friday is group meeting, so Front Line will be off line. We’ll be back on September 26th.