SWOG Reporting Out for 2024: High Impact!
We've just posted our annual SWOG Cancer Research Network Impact Report for 2024, an easy-to-scan annual update on key performance indicators, with a brief review of the group's signal achievements for the year just ended.
Our leadership in science and innovation remains second to none, and in 2024 we had central roles in many of the National Cancer Institute’s most innovative clinical research initiatives. Obviously, I want you to read the report itself, so I won’t give away too much now. But here are a few tantalizing crumbs:
- We launched the screening protocol at the core of the myeloMATCH umbrella trial, a precision medicine trial that, as I’ve written before, takes pan-NCTN collaboration to new heights. We also activated myeloMATCH’s first sub-study.
- We brought the pioneering Pragmatica-Lung trial to a more-than-successful conclusion, reaching the trial’s accrual goal in just 21 months (along with its goal of highly representative enrollment).
- We (again) significantly updated the NCI’s first large-scale precision medicine trial to align it with changing practice and patient needs, moving Lung-MAP into its third generation of testing new treatments in advanced non-small cell lung cancer.
- We co-activated – with the Alliance – the first trial to come from the NCI’s Clinical Trials Innovation Unit, the PROSPECT-Lung trial, opening in mid-December.
Our accrual numbers continue to climb, with 4,794 participants enrolled to SWOG-run trials in 2024 (not counting screening registrations), and our publication numbers remain robust. In addition, just over one-half of the papers we published last year appeared in high impact-factor journals.
Our most prominent publications were the primary results manuscripts for S1826 (Hodgkin lymphoma) and S1011 (bladder cancer), both published in the New England Journal of Medicine last fall.
We also published or presented other important results already making their way into clinical practice, including
- results of the S1712 trial in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) that could help more patients achieve treatment-free remission
- a large analysis of long-term adverse effects from prostate cancer treatment, comparing the risk of complications to the background risk faced by men in an untreated control group (invaluable data for those considering screening or treatment)
- important S1609 DART trial findings in even more rare cancers, including adrenocortical carcinoma and sarcomatoid carcinoma of the lung
- S1714’s model for predicting a patient’s risk of taxane-induced peripheral neuropathy
In the Hope Foundation section of the Impact Report, Hope President and CEO Jo Horn notes that it has now been a quarter of a century since the inception of our Hope-sponsored Early-Stage Investigator Training Course, which as of the end of 2024 has nurtured the careers of 126 promising oncology researchers and future leaders.
Jo also cites the 2024 launch of a Foundation-supported mentoring program to foster the participation of advanced practice providers in expanded roles within NCI-sponsored clinical trials.
In short, there’s plenty for SWOG and Hope to celebrate from the year just completed. I encourage you to take a look.
Happy new year, and I wish you a productive and joyous 2025!
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