Spring 2026 Group Meeting: Brimming with Opportunity

We’re just back from our first SWOG group meeting as group chairs, energized and eager for progress.

One of the event’s key sessions was Friday’s plenary, which featured an open dialogue between SWOG members and SWOG leadership that was brimming with ideas and opportunities.

The early part of the session was devoted to celebrating some of SWOG’s recent accomplishments, to acknowledging departing leaders who had charted the way there, and to presenting our own vision for continuing to grow SWOG’s success into the future.

In recognizing outgoing leadership, we announced a new initiative designed by The Hope Foundation and SWOG to honor and promote the legacy of SWOG’s group chair emeritus.

The Dr. Charles D. Blanke Veterans’ Access to Clinical Trials Initiative builds on more than a decade of efforts – most initiated or inspired by Dr. Blanke – to bring NCI-supported clinical trials back to VA medical centers and the veterans they treat.

The Blanke Initiative incorporates three elements:

• Renewed support for a VA Storefront Award program, which has helped establish regional networks of VAMCs that collaborate to streamline the administration of NCI clinical trials
• A new program of VA travel grants that will strengthen our connections with VA medical centers by giving more of their staff the opportunity to attend SWOG’s group meetings
• A new VA Think Tank that will bring a range of Veterans Administration leaders to the table with our VA committee to identify best practices, lower barriers, and foster innovation in oncology research

This new program signifies a shared commitment between SWOG and Hope to continue the progress we’ve made under Dr. Blanke’s leadership toward ensuring that all U.S. military veterans being treated for cancer at VAMCs have opportunities to participate in NCI-supported trials and to benefit from the advanced treatments they offer.  

You can find more details on this initiative in the Hope press release.

Friday’s plenary was also an opportunity for us to, in tag-team fashion, expand on our ideas for driving SWOG’s next era of success, a vision we’ve outlined in a previous Front Line post. In San Francisco, this perspective was complemented by talks from Dr. Mike LeBlanc, SWOG group statistician, and Dr. Jimmy Rae, vice chair for translational medicine and biobanking.

Dr. LeBlanc highlighted the work and vision of SWOG’s Statistics and Data Management Center in areas such as the development of new data collection strategies, innovation in statistical designs for trials, and the creation of advanced search tools that will give investigators enhanced access to SWOG clinical data and images.

Dr. Rae, in turn, encouraged research teams to dig deeper in mining the more than 2 million specimens now stored in SWOG’s biobank (and the associated clinical data), for uses such as validating biomarkers and generating hypotheses worth investigating in tomorrow’s studies. He also painted a picture of the potential benefits of digital pathology, with high-dimensional images captured and stored rather than the specimens themselves.

The San Francisco meeting included so much more, of course, but we wanted to highlight here some key themes. Recordings of most of the open sessions are posted (or will be soon) to the SWOG website, accessible to logged in members. You’re sure to find useful, educational, thought-provoking content in these recordings, even if you had previously attended in real time!