A Chicago Meeting to Remember
SWOG members met in Chicago last week for our fall group meeting. The format was again an in-person/virtual hybrid, but the energy in the rooms was even better than what we often see with an all-face-to-face meeting. The mood was joyous, and people seemed truly happy to be together. This is the sort of human–human interaction that tends to increase dedication to the group’s mission, and it’s a tough thing to pull off in a fully virtual environment.
Our SWOG Latin America Initiative symposium is always a meeting high point for me, and this fall’s session no exception. It was highly productive, covering a variety of topics, including an exploration of ways we can improve access to SWOG for our international members. Trials and opportunities in the area of gastrointestinal cancers were highlighted, including several proposals by SWOG members from Latin America that are under discussion in our research committees. SWOG is becoming a truly international organization.
One unique event was a three-hour intensive workshop on the essentials advanced practice providers (APPs) need to know in caring for patients within a clinical trial setting. This was the latest in a series of initiatives our APP members – nurse practitioners, pharmacists, physician assistants, clinical nurse specialists, and others – have undertaken to increase the involvement of APPs in SWOG research. Last spring, they held a symposium on the subject, and as a follow-on to these two events, they’re forming a task force to define goals for APPs in the group and to identify barriers and propose solutions. If your interest has been piqued, the SWOG oncology APP task force is now accepting applications for membership.
The Preferred Partnerships Program of SWOG Clinical Trials Partnerships is coming into its own, and its initiatives were discussed prominently in a number of sessions. By the time of our next group meeting – in San Francisco in May – I predict we’ll see many of its trials active and accruing. Please keep your eyes open for communications about nascent CTP studies.
Our plenaries are always not-to-be-missed events. This fall’s did not disappoint.
SWOG vice chair for translational medicine Dr. Lee Ellis usually plans our TM plenaries to feature an update on some of the most interesting work being supported by Hope Foundation grants. In Chicago, we heard from Coltman Fellow Dr. Kim Blenman on her work using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze images of slides to measure tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes as a means of predicting response to breast cancer treatment. In keeping with this theme, the session also featured a presentation by Flatiron Health’s Dr. Aaron Cohen on applying AI to increase clinical trial enrollment. If you missed Plenary I, watch the SWOG website to catch the video when it’s posted (possibly by the time you read this).
Plenary II delivered an outstanding set of presentations educating many SWOG members on the next generation of NCI precision medicine umbrella protocols. These are the new molecular analysis for therapy choice – or MATCH – trials: MyeloMATCH, ComboMATCH, and ImmunoMATCH. There’s no doubt that these master protocols are going to account for a significant percentage of the studies we open and conduct over the next few years.
Continuing with the MATCH focus, our newest research committee – immunotherapeutics – which until last spring was a research support committee, held a kickoff session for its inaugural trial. This is the S2101 BiCaZO pilot trial, which, among other objectives, is testing the feasibility of the assays that will be used in future ImmunoMATCH subprotocols. S2101 has just opened. Look for it on a CTSU website near you.
Recordings of most open sessions from the fall group meeting will soon be posted to SWOG’s YouTube channel and linked from the SWOG website. Of course, not all sessions were open. Among the not-open sessions held in Chicago was the first meeting of the group chair nominating/search committee (alas, the beginning of the end for my tenure).
You also won’t see a recording of Saturday morning’s committee chairs session, but that session did educate us on the protocol development “flex slots” proposed by our protocol resourcing task force. These slots give us some flexibility to move forward developing “extraordinary” concepts into full protocols, even if a committee has already reached its allotment of three protocols under active, advanced development. Saturday’s presentation described how committee chairs can submit an idea to be considered for one of those flex slots, which involves completing a simplified capsule submission form.
I’ll take this opportunity to reiterate that the so-called “rule of 3” does not limit the number of trials a committee can have open at any given time, but only the number they can have within the protocol development (not concept development) pipeline.
Finally, if you registered for the fall meeting, you’ll soon receive our post-meeting survey. We rely on these survey results to help us refine our approach for the next group meeting. This feedback has been particularly helpful as we’ve been forced to try out new meeting formats (virtual, hybrid, … what next?), so please complete the survey and have your say. It could help make next May’s San Francisco experience even more fabulous than this October’s Chicago meeting to remember.
Other Recent Stories
