SWOG Latin America Initiative Levels Up

Once again, we were lucky to have Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), attend and contribute. Her colleague Dr. Elizabeth Garrett-Mayer, vice president of ASCO’s Center for Research and Analytics, also joined in person and presented.

My biggest takeaway from the conference? I continue to be astonished by the enthusiasm and engagement of our Latin America members. I could not be more impressed by, nor be happier to work with, them.

The trip also helped make clear to me how the value of that engagement has grown – continues to grow – for SWOG.

For example, SLAI member enrollment to NCI trials (including SWOG trials) has taken a huge step forward -- in 2024, these sites have enrolled more than 220 participants, an almost threefold increase over the previous highest enrollment year. Member sites in Chile and Mexico have been standouts this year, with Chile accounting for nearly one-half of the total SLAI accrual!

SWOG trials S2010, S2013, and S1802 have particularly benefited, as has ECOG-ACRIN’s EA1151, and SLAI members are working to open other trials, across all the adult cooperative groups, so these benefits will extend across the NCTN.

To put these contributions in context, at our October group meeting I was able to cite Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Cancerologia (INCan) as one of the leading accruers among all SWOG sites during the first half of 2024, and I was thrilled to recognize Uruguay’s Universidad de la Republica – Facultad de Medicina as one of the top-performing data management sites among all SWOG main member sites (Peru’s INEN also appeared on this list of top performers at our spring group meeting).

We’re making significant progress in achieving what was outlined by Dr. Mariana Chavez Mac Gregor, SWOG executive officer for international affairs, in the first issue of the SLAI Newsletter in the summer of 2022:

“We envisage this initiative as an integral component of a broader strategy that pursues the reduction of cancer inequities in the US and the Americas as a whole.”

The SLAI is also realizing its goal of promoting interaction between US and Latin American researchers – through courses, conferences, and mentorship opportunities, but also through our SLAI colleagues’ participation in SWOG committees. At least 10 of our committees now include one or more Latin American investigators on their rosters. 

Joining a SWOG committee is always an opportunity for scientific and career growth; for our SLAI members it’s also a chance to advocate directly, starting at the earliest stages of trial design, for careful consideration of factors that can determine whether Latin American sites can open and enroll to those trials.

The SLAI Symposium at group meeting and the semiannual SLAI Newsletter provide plenty of examples of fruitful interaction between Latin American and US investigators. Here are just a few:

• Dr. Luis Malpica, ASCO Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials awardee, has been collaborating closely with SWOG mentor Dr. Alex Herrera and Dr. Sonali Smith, lymphoma committee vice chair, to forge connections between lymphoma research communities in the US and South America. The SLAI has not previously been active in hematology, so this collaboration is working to open new opportunities, and to ensure that SLAI member site participation is considered in NCTN lymphoma trials.
   
• Dr. Javier Retamales’s work as director of the Grupo Oncológico Cooperativo Chileno de Investigación (GOCCHI), which serves as administrative lead for three treatment institutions in Chile, provides support that makes it possible for those sites to participate in NCI trials. Dr. Retamales is a graduate of our Early-Stage Investigator Training Course (ESITC), an active member of our radiation oncology and symptom management & survivorship committees, and earlier this year was awarded a SWOG Early Exploration and Development (SEED) Fund grant for his pilot study of a platform to make it easier for caregivers to submit electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) data in palliative care settings.
   
• Dr. Iván Lyra, of the Hospital de Clínicas Dr. Manuel Quintela in Uruguay, who helped host the 2022 SLAI conference in Montevideo, is a graduate of SWOG’s 2024 ESITC and continues to work with the GI committee and others on his proposal for a de-escalation trial in gastric and esophageal cancers.
   
• Dr. Natalia Jara, of GOCCHI in Chile and a member of our early therapeutics and rare cancers committee, is the first SLAI co-chair on a SWOG trial proposal, S2505, a study of radiation therapy in high-risk sarcoma. Making the study feasible for SLAI sites to participate in is a key design consideration in this trial’s development.
   
• Dr. Tatiana Vidaurre is a member of four(!) SWOG committees and was one of our hosts in Peru last month. Dr. Vidaurre has been site PI at INEN since early 2023, and during that time has supercharged that site’s efforts to open and enroll to NCI clinical trials. INEN is now enrolling well to two trials, working to activate several more, and actively seeking additional trials in which to participate.

This SLAI success and growth is the product of many hands. Central among them are Dr. Chavez Mac Gregor’s, but I also want to highlight the continued commitment of our colleagues at Cancer Research And Biostatistics (CRAB), and to thank them for their work.

Of course, support from The Hope Foundation for Cancer Research is essential to this endeavor, and has been from its earliest days. We’re extraordinarily grateful for that support. At our fall group meeting, Dr. Retamales warmly expressed that gratitude, so I’ll close with his words:

“When you’re lacking the really basic things in your hospital, … it’s a really good thing that you can, you can implement clinical trials, get better things for your patients, and I think in this case the Hope Foundation really literally provides hope, provides hope to our every day. So thank you.”

I echo Dr. Retamales’s gratitude, and I’m thrilled with SLAI’s success.
 

As the next two weeks are dense with holidays, we’ll take a break from Front Line next Friday. I hope your holidays are meaningful and that 2025 is a wonderful year for you. Thank you for all you have done to advance our research and our mission in 2024!