By Peter J. O’Dwyer, MD (left)
and Mitchell D. Schnall, MD, PhD

As May quickly approaches, so too does another ECOG-ACRIN Group Meeting. This spring, we draw your attention to a few key shifts in the schedule. The Robert L. Comis Translational Science Symposium will begin earlier than usual, at 12:00 pm on Tuesday, May 5. The Reception will follow that evening (Tuesday) at 7:30 pm, and the General Session will take place the next morning, Wednesday, May 6, at 9:00 am. We hope to see you at all three events!

The theme of this spring’s Comis Symposium is Susceptibility and Inflammation. The topic is current given the gradual emergence of data to demonstrate that a high proportion of all cancers are caused by inflammation, and that those associated with obesity and diabetes are a subset for which we may have therapies. We’ve assembled an exceptional slate of speakers, to be followed by a panel discussion in the second half of the session. There will be presentations on potential targets in inflammation and in metabolism, then one on imaging that could serve as a biomarker, and discussion of a study in development for breast cancer prevention leveraging GLP-1 mechanisms.

As usual, the General Session will feature talks on high-priority issues in cancer research. One area of growing momentum is therapeutic vaccine development, an effort that has been accelerated by the (relatively) newly appointed NCI Director Dr. Tony Letai through public-private partnerships with cancer centers and industry. At the General Session, Dr. Elizabeth Jaffee (Johns Hopkins University), a national leader in this area, will discuss the new structure, and also share her research in pancreatic cancer vaccines. Several such vaccine development strategies are ripe for evaluation in multi-institutional trials. The General Session will also include presentations from Group leaders in immunotherapeutics and lung cancer, highlighting strategic priorities and future goals for these programs. Truly the past is prelude in immune-based therapies, and we need to be ready for studies beyond our current antibodies, including personalized vaccines and cellular reprogramming.

At the recent American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, we were invited to present on external control and real-world data (RWD) projects. Dr. Rebecca Hubbard (Brown University) delivered the first of three talks, reprising her Fall 2025 Comis Symposium discussion on methods for bringing existing data into the control arms of phase III trials, either as supplements or as the entire control arm for new therapies in rare tumors. In every ECOG-ACRIN therapeutic committee we have patients with rare or uncommon cancers for whom progress is urgently needed. This is an opportunity for novel research. Dr. Neal Meropol followed with a discussion of Flatiron Health^®’s extensive experience extracting data from electronic health records (EHRs), and its in-depth approaches to data acquisition and interpretation. He described a recently presented Friends of Cancer Research study analyzing eight data sources for their ability to replicate the control arm of a phase III trial in pancreatic cancer. The progression-free survival curves for most of the data sets were close to the trial curve, and additional work to understand what drives differences from the study group is ongoing. Finally, Dr. Peter O’Dwyer summarized ECOG-ACRIN’s implementation of a real-world lung cancer study, noting that early analyses are showing high-quality data. He also summarized additional studies in which ECOG-ACRIN is exploring different approaches to EHR curation. Perhaps the best news at this point is that we have assembled a network of 40 institutions capable of accruing to these studies, and we are in discussions to activate more. There is substantial capability here: as Dr. Otis Brawley often emphasizes, oncologists and institutions who participate in clinical trials also take better care of their non-trial patients.

Finally, we also note that Dr. Letai spent over 1.5 hours speaking on the current state of the NCI’s cancer research efforts. He emphasized that the government’s commitment to continuing support is unchanged, and that accelerating the clinical application of basic science is a key priority. Both NIH and NCI budgets for 2026 show an increase over the previous year, and the 2027 version is at an early stage of planning. Major cuts are not anticipated. Dr. Letai acknowledged that there are ideological differences in how science is perceived and interpreted but emphasized that these are not resolved by hastily dismissing alternative viewpoints. He made a plea for respectful disagreement and noted that our responsibility is to refute inaccurate claims with data. This seems a productive way forward and more likely to be persuasive—though it does require us to marshal the facts and be prepared to articulate the reality at any moment! I hope we will all be ready for that challenge.

Read the April 2026 issue here.