A Terrific 2025 for the SWOG NCORP Research Base
As we work to polish SWOG's NCORP Research Base grant application (the submission deadline is expected to be in January), I want to highlight our most recent crop of NCORP trials – two newly launched, one imminent – all randomized, controlled phase III studies.
S2408, which opened early in 2025, is enrolling patients who are scheduled to have a distal pancreatectomy for a confirmed or suspected malignancy.
It asks whether a single, preoperative dose of lanreotide can help prevent post-operative pancreatic fistula, a major complication patients can face after a pancreatic resection.
S2408 chairs include Drs. Jonathan Sham, Venu Pillarisetty, Robert Krouse, and Gerald Paul Wright (Dr. Wright, of the Cancer Research Consortium of West Michigan NCORP, is community co-chair for the study).
S2408’s enrollment target is 274, with current enrollment at 23 participants and 88 sites approved to enroll thus far.
You can learn more about this important palliative care committee trial from the recording of the S2408 kickoff sessionat our spring 2025 group meeting (login required).
You may also want to tune in to the S2408 monthly site check-in meeting, held the first Monday of the month from 2:30 – 3:30 pm CT. Email cancercontrolquestion@crab.org to be added to the call invitation.
Our most recently activated NCORP trial is S2417CD, which opened in August.
As many as 40 percent of patients treated for stage 2 or 3 colorectal cancer (CRC) will have a recurrence. If found early, these recurrences can often be cured, so guidelines recommend three to five years of surveillance after treatment.
But many survivors are not fully aware of their recurrence risk or of why surveillance is important.
S2417CD aims in part to leverage patients’ connections with partners, family members, and other important support providers, to help ensure survivors do get the recommended surveillance.
This is part of the rationale behind the intervention being tested in S2417CD, a pragmatic trial enrolling people who have completed surgery for stage 2 or 3 CRC and who identify a support person who might be willing to join them in enrolling to the study.
S2417CD tests whether the “Current Together After Cancer” website intervention can increase the rate of guideline-recommended surveillance among CRC survivors with an identified support person.
The site is designed to educate patients, promote engagement of a support person in a patient’s disease surveillance, and provide communication training to help a patient and their support person reach consensus on surveillance questions.
The trial aims to enroll 654 participants and roughly 393 of their support partners. 287 sites have been approved to enroll to the study. Study chairs are Drs. Christine Veenstra and Sarah Hawley.
An informational webinar about S2417CD was held last week. Contact cancercontrolquestion@crab.org if you’d like to join future such calls. An additional resource is the recording of the S2417CD information session we held at our spring 2025 group meeting.
SWOG’s upcoming cancer care delivery trial is S2424CD, which we hope to activate by the end of the year, depending in part on quick resolution of the current U.S. government shutdown.
S2424CD will test an intervention designed to improve goals-of-care communication with people with advanced cancer. This remote intervention, which will be led by a centralized group of lay health workers, is called Algorithm-Enabled Patients Activated in Cancer Care Through Teams (A-PACT).
The study team is now recruiting NCORP-based recruitment centers that have cancer care delivery research funding (a “recruitment center” is a group of sites within an NCORP that share the same version of an electronic health record system).
The study team will work with these sites to set up an EHR-based tool to identify high-risk, eligible patients who might benefit from conversations about the goals of their cancer care. This screening tool should reduce site workload during the trial and should help speed enrollment.
S2424CD study chairs are Drs. Ravi Parikh, Manali Patel, and Christopher Manz.
Once again, we have a recorded information session you can turn to to learn more about this trial. You can also reach out to cancercontrolquestion@crab.org with questions.
Remember that, as with all SWOG clinical trials, patient-friendly summaries are available for introducing these studies to potential participants and their caregivers (here they are for S2408 and S2417CD).
As we finalize our NCORP grant application in the coming months, I’ll have more to say about the terrific growth and success of our NCORP research endeavor during the current grant cycle, and about our vision for future impact in the areas of cancer control, cancer prevention, and cancer care delivery.
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