Meet Our New Melanoma and Lung Chairs

The first chair has been at the helm of her committee since the end of 2021 – Sapna P. Patel, MD, chair of melanoma. The second will become SWOG’s lung committee chair on April 1 – Jhanelle Gray, MD.
 

Sapna P. Patel, MD – Chair, SWOG Melanoma Committee

Dr. Patel is associate professor in the Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she also directs the uveal melanoma program and the departmental fellowship program. She earned her MD from the University of Texas Medical Branch, completed her internship and residency at the University of Colorado at Denver Health Sciences Center, and completed a fellowship in medical oncology at MD Anderson.

With specialties in uveal and cutaneous melanomas, Dr. Patel has led clinical trials that include the ongoing SWOG S1801 phase II comparison of adjuvant versus neoadjuvant pembrolizumab for high-risk melanoma, which recently passed the halfway mark toward its accrual goal. She also co-chaired S1404, the phase III study that last year reported results comparing adjuvant pembrolizumab to adjuvant interferon or ipilimumab in patients with high-risk resected melanoma. The S1404 final study results have now been published in Cancer Discovery.

Dr. Patel’s vision for our melanoma committee, which she has chaired since last fall, includes integrating SWOG’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion more deeply into the committee’s work. This includes, for example, expanding research on mucosal and acral melanoma, two forms of the disease that are more common in persons of color. It also includes working to increase diversity among melanoma study chairs and the committee leadership.

She notes that the committee has done a great job over recent years conducting essential studies in melanoma (such as S1404, the largest study to date of adjuvant anti-PD1 treatment in melanoma) and that these trials have generated sizeable biospecimen banks. She would like to increase the committee’s focus on analyzing these specimens to learn what we can from those tumor and blood samples.

As a disease site leader, she says, she’s now gaining a better sense of the breadth of resources available within SWOG, recognizing many opportunities for cross-pollination with other committees, and highlighting prospects for collaboration – in particular with the early therapeutics and rare cancers, immunotherapeutics, symptom control and quality of life, and patient advocate committees. She encourages all SWOG members to learn more about the many resources available to them, emphasizing the numerous targeted funding opportunities offered by The Hope Foundation – for young investigators, for work with biospecimens, for increasing awareness of specific clinical trials, and more. “There are so many resources within SWOG we should familiarize ourselves with,” she says.

She’s right, of course, and I’m thrilled to have her as leader of our melanoma committee!
 

Jhanelle Gray, MD – Chair-Elect,  SWOG Lung Committee

In late December I wrote that our lung committee chair, Karen Kelly, MD, would be stepping down. Replacing her, effective April 1st, will be Jhanelle Gray, MD, department chair and program leader of thoracic oncology and co-leader of the CCSG Molecular Medicine Program at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. 

Also a professor in the Department of Oncologic Sciences at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, Dr. Gray earned her MD at Cornell University Medical College and completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at The New York Presbyterian Hospital – Cornell. She then went on to complete a fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center.

With a research focus on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), she has served as leader of numerous clinical trials, including the phase III PACIFIC trial of durvalumab after chemoradiotherapy in patients with stage III unresectable NSCLC, which changed the standard of care for these patients, establishing the benefit of immunotherapy in this setting. She also served as co-chair of the S1900B Lung-MAP sub-study and holds up Lung-MAP as a model for collaborative cancer research, both across organizations and across NCTN groups.

Her vision for leading SWOG’s lung committee is built on three pillars:

1. Ushering in new treatment paradigms, aligning the committee's work with SWOG's greater mission to bring the most innovative, cutting-edge therapies to patients. This requires partnering with all members, she says, including both academic and community sites, as well as with patient advocates as key collaborators.
2. Reaching more diverse patient populations, by initially gaining an understanding of the current state and then in turn identifying what opportunities exist for expanding our reach. Dr. Gray plans to reach out to NCORP site leaders to help identify the barriers to engaging broader patient populations and to learn what more SWOG can do.
3. Cultivating the careers and ideas of our junior investigators, with an intentional focus on underrepresented minority researchers. By promoting selfless mentorship, she says, senior leaders can work behind the scenes and allow our young stars to shine, while leveraging existing strengths will bring everyone to the table and facilitate an open exchange of ideas. This can be accomplished, she believes, by working in close partnership with The Hope Foundation and conducting intensive outreach to member sites. Dr. Gray says, for example, she would like to see each academic site bring at least one new junior faculty member into the fold.

I am entirely on board with that goal, and find this just one of many examples of Dr. Gray’s breadth of vision – her ability to keep in view the good of the group and the good of the patients we serve – a breadth that promises great things to come. I’m delighted she has accepted my offer to lead our lung research!

I could not be more pleased with this new leadership for SWOG. I hope you will join me in welcoming our new chairs.