History & Impact

Grant Taylor, MD, SWOG founder — Grant Taylor, MD \n SWOG Cancer Research Network founder

History

SWOG Cancer Research Network is a part of the nation's oldest and largest publicly funded cancer research network. Texas pediatrician Grant Taylor, MD, founded the group in Houston in 1956 under a new National Cancer Institute (NCI) program aimed at testing childhood cancer treatments through regional networks of physicians. That's how we got our original name - the Southwest Cancer Chemotherapy Study Group, which later become the Southwest Oncology Group, which was shortened to SWOG, then changed to SWOG Cancer Research Network in 2018.

What started with one man in Texas has grown into a cancer research community that includes more than 20,000 people at over 1,300 hospitals, clinics, and cancer centers worldwide.

Impact

Today, SWOG is a major part of the cancer research infrastructure in the United States and the world. SWOG has members in 45 states and eight other countries as part of the NCI's National Clinical Trials Network, or NCTN.

Our clinical trials have:

- Led to the approval of 14 new cancer drugs
- Changed the standards of cancer care more than 100 times, and
- Saved more than 3 million years of human life

To learn more about our story, and the progress we've made, scroll through our timeline.