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

This audience is likely aware that last month Dr. Anthony Letai was sworn in as the 18th Director of the National Cancer Institute. We support this appointment for many reasons: Dr. Letai is a highly respected physician-scientist; he has made pioneering contributions to cancer biology, particularly in the field of apoptosis; he is reported to be a collaborative leader and mentor; and, he appreciates the value of publicly funded cancer research. We congratulate Dr. Letai on his appointment and look forward to working with him toward our shared goal of reducing the burden of cancer.

The current budgetary impasse is familiar to everyone, and the potential solutions that may resolve it have varying implications for cooperative group funding. A continuing resolution may result in short-term stability, but a more permanent solution is in everyone’s best interest. We will let you know how the specifics of any deal may impact our activities and encourage you to continue emphasizing the importance of publicly funded cancer research within your communities. Meanwhile, we will do our part by supporting initiatives like last month’s Rally for Medical Research. Founded by the American Association of Cancer Research in 2013, the event brings together patients, advocates, researchers, clinicians, and partner organizations to urge Congress to provide robust and predictable NIH funding. With continued collaboration and advocacy, we can help secure the sustained federal support needed to advance cancer research for years to come.

In this column, we have written often about real-world data (RWD) as a topic of increasing interest to the cancer research community broadly and to our Group specifically. Our first study in this area, PrE1702, has now been active for one year and is enrolling at a brisk pace. As a reminder, PrE1702 is collecting data on patients receiving standard therapy for EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer who are ineligible or unwilling to join a clinical trial. The study chair, Dr. Suzanne Cole, was recently featured in the ASCO Daily News discussing the value of RWD studies and the implications for the future of cancer research.

“By prospectively collecting data on populations representative of the breadth of US patients treated in routine care, researchers can obtain insight into the effectiveness of new treatments that had previously been available only in traditional explanatory clinical trial designs,” wrote Dr. Cole. “This approach enhances the relevance and generalizability of research findings.”

This has been the initial realization of an ECOG-ACRIN strategy to get the data where we can find it, and not just in formal clinical trials. It follows the urging of Dr. Amy Abernethy to create “a learning environment” in which data from many sources can inform what can best benefit patients. We and other cooperative groups have been integrating novel approaches to data acquisition into our programs, and the Robert L. Comis, MD Translational Science Symposium (October 22 from 3:00-5:00 PM Eastern Time) at our Philadelphia Group Meeting will address opportunities for new trial designs, and how they can be interpreted. We urge you to participate in this session, and in each committee, to develop trials to explore these opportunities.

Finally, the General Session (October 23 from 5:30-7:30 PM Eastern Time) will feature a set of presentations of the initial correlative science public-private partnership, in which ECOG-ACRIN, together with Caris Life Sciences and the National Cancer Institute, created an agreement to analyze tumor samples from the TAILORx trial for pathomics and genomic profiling. From October 2024, when the agreement was signed, to August 2025, 5000 samples were studied, and the initial results will be shared in advance of their presentation at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Also in this session, a keynote presentation by Dr. Petros Grivas, the 2025 Young Investigator of the Year, will be given along with other presentations of recent advances in breast cancer and correlative studies.

We hope to see you there!

Read the October 2025 issue here.