SWOG/Hope Leadership and Project Development Course, 2026

We’re proud to announce the six outstanding researchers selected to take part in SWOG’s 2026 Leadership and Project Development (LeAP-D) Course.

As the flagship career development program for investigators working on new studies within SWOG, the LeAP-D course includes ongoing mentorship, online course work in how to develop and conduct a clinical trial within SWOG, and an intensive three-day face-to-face meeting in Seattle that will give them a chance to “workshop” their in-progress protocols. 

The LeAP-D program (previously our Young/Early Stage Investigator Training Course) has a quarter-century history of nurturing upcoming SWOG leaders and incubating exciting studies. 

We don’t need to go far for examples: here are several protocols from last year’s LeAP-D cohort now moving toward – or just past – activation:

• Dr. Jeremy Harris’s protocol comparing short-course preoperative radiation to the standard radiation regimen for patients with resectable soft-tissue sarcoma opened earlier this month as phase III SWOG S2505.
• Dr. Mariya Rozenblit’s test of a multimodality approach to treating de novo oligometastatic HER2-positive breast cancer – SWOG S2511 – is in the pre-activation home stretch (expected launch: mid-August).
• Dr. Mark Tyson’s S2611 concept for a randomized phase III comparing intravesical therapies in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer recently earned approval of the NCI’s Genitourinary Steering Committee and has moved into full protocol development.

With those highlights as inspiration, here are the researchers we welcome to the LeAP-D class of 2026:

• Shradda Dalwadi, MD, MBA
  University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio
  Project: trial that asks whether patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer whose tumors are classified as ultra-low risk by the MammaPrint assay can safely forego endocrine therapy after surgery
• Shipra Gandhi, MD
  Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University
  Project: phase III trial comparing a combination of capecitabine plus a PD-1 and VEGF-A blockade drug to capecitabine plus pembrolizumab in patients with triple-negative breast cancer who have residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant therapy
• Matthew Hadfield, DO
  Brown University
  Project: randomized phase II trial to evaluate whether the addition of an investigational integrin agonist to neoadjuvant pembrolizumab can improve outcomes for patients with stage III or resectable stage IV melanoma
• Andrea Maliachi-Diaz, MD, MSc
  Instituto Nacional de Cancerología (INCan), Mexico City
  Project: case-control study to identify genomic predictors of early resistance to adjuvant endocrine therapy in patients with high-risk hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer
• Sarah Psutka, MD
  University of Washington
  Project: SWOG S2614 (FIN-BC), a randomized placebo-controlled phase III trial of finasteride to prevent recurrence in patients with low-grade intermediate-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer
• Udit Singhal, MD
  University of Michigan
  Project: SWOG S2613, a randomized phase III trial to evaluate whether PSMA-PET imaging can guide decisions about de-escalating pelvic lymph node dissection at the time of prostatectomy in men with unfavorable-intermediate or high-risk prostate cancer

We look forward to working with these colleagues on these and future studies, in the months and years to come.

We want to thank the reviewers, the mentors, and the many others who contribute to making the LeAP-D program such an outstanding success, starting with The Hope Foundation for Cancer Research, whose support makes the program possible.

For those already thinking about next year’s LeAP-D course, the program will accept applications for the 2027 workshop starting next spring.