SWOG is 70 Years Strong!

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the cooperative group that would go on to become the SWOG Cancer Research Network.

In 1956, at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, Dr. H. Grant Taylor led the formation of the Southwest Cancer Chemotherapy Study Group, or SWCCSG, a product of the National Cancer Institute’s effort, begun the previous year, to form cooperative groups to conduct collaborative clinical trials. 

In the seven decades since then, our group (renamed the Southwest Oncology Group in 1973 and SWOG Cancer Research Network in 2018) has conducted more than 1,400 clinical trials, and our tally of volunteers who have enrolled to those trials is now very close to a quarter of a million participants (our website’s front-page counter today reads 247,084). 

We’ve published the results of those trials and other research in more than 3,200 manuscripts, and have presented almost 2,600 abstracts at professional meetings and conferences. Most of these are listed and linked in our online bibliography.

In addition to generating the primary trial evidence for 15 FDA approvals of treatment regimens (the most recent approval was earlier this spring), we’ve regularly published results that have changed the standard of care and been incorporated into updated treatment guidelines. 

All along, SWOG’s primary mission has been to improve the lives of those affected by cancer. One way we’ve quantified that improvement is in estimating how many additional life-years have been gained by patients with cancer based on the results of some of our trials.

Looking only at the impact of 23 positive treatment trials, a 2017 analysis led by SWOG biostatistician Joseph Unger, PhD, reported that the findings of those trials had resulted in an estimated gain of 3.34 million life-years that would otherwise have been lost to cancer.

It’s an amazing figure, one you’ve probably heard before, but that 2017 paper also projected the cumulative impact of those trials through 2025: 5.38 million life-years gained.

That gain, of course, tells only part of the story. In addition to benefits from the many other lessons learned from those and other SWOG treatment trials, there’s the undeniable impact of SWOG’s work to reduce the burden of cancer via prevention trials and other studies in cancer control and cancer care delivery.

Perhaps even harder to quantify, but also undeniable, is the impact of the extensive SWOG translational research that helps drive our next studies. 

We’re incredibly proud of what a collaboration of visionary researchers, dedicated care providers, and forward-looking patient volunteers has accomplished under the SWOG banner over seven decades. And of what more we’ll accomplish in the years to come.

If you’re attending the ASCO annual meeting this weekend – physically or virtually – please remember that the work we present there (and you’ll have many opportunities to sample it) is just the latest in a decades long, amazingly fruitful quest.

Happy anniversary, SWOG!