Newswise — ANN ARBOR, MICH. – Four of the most promising early career researchers in oncology have been accepted to the 2012 SWOG Young Investigator Training Course, to be held September 10 – 12 in Seattle.
Each fall, four or five successful applicants attend this nationally acclaimed intensive three-day workshop to learn how to develop and conduct multi-site clinical trials within the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) cooperative group network, of which SWOG is a member.
To date this workshop has provided mentorship and career support to more than 60 researchers. With detailed instruction in protocol development, trial management, and statistical analysis, the course builds a cohort of trained clinical trial researchers with a thorough understanding of cooperative group procedures and the ability to efficiently plan and execute high-priority studies that in some cases might enroll thousands of patients at hundreds of treatment sites internationally.
Each Young Investigator presents a research proposal as part of the application process, and that proposal is refined and fleshed out during the workshop. More than 30 of the proposals advanced in previous workshops have since been launched as successful studies with National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.
The 2012 SWOG Young Investigators are introduced below, with brief descriptions of their proposals.
Christopher Lieu, M.D., Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Cancer CenterChristopher Lieu holds an M.D. from Wake Forest University and completed his internship and residency at the University of Colorado Denver, where he also served as chief resident. After completing a fellowship in medical oncology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, he returned to the University of Colorado to join the faculty of the Division of Medical Oncology.
Among his honors and awards, Lieu has received a Young Investigators Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) to support his research on the role of bFGF in resistance to anti-VEGF therapy, and a Merit Award from the Conquer Cancer Foundation. He has also been honored with the Paul Calabresi Career Development Award for Clinical Oncology.
Lieu is currently principal investigator on a phase I trial of the agent MM-151 and has served as co-PI on a phase II study of irinotecan plus brivanib in metastatic colorectal cancer.
As his Young Investigator Training Course project, Lieu proposes developing a phase II trial comparing TAK-733 (a MEK inhibitor) to standard chemotherapy in patients with KRAS mutant, PI3K wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer.
William Lowrance, M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor, University of Utah Huntsman Cancer InstituteWilliam Lowrance earned an M.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina and served his urology residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He then completed a urologic oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he served as administrative chief fellow, and earned an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Honors and awards include a best poster recognition from the American Urological Association 2012 Annual Meeting (where he was a contributor on seven poster presentations) and an MSKCC Annual Clinical Research Award.
Lowrance holds a Cancer Control and Population Sciences Pilot Project Award as principal investigator for a population-based study of prostate cancer presentation, treatment patterns, and genetic variants. He has also served as co-investigator on an NIH/NCI Challenge Grant supported project comparing surgical treatment options and outcomes for men with localized prostate cancer.
At SWOG’s Young Investigator Training Course, Lowrance will refine a proposal for a phase II trial of dutasteride with or without intermittent MDV3100 (an androgen receptor antagonist) to extend time to progression for men with adenocarcinoma of the prostate.
Jatin Shah, M.D., Assistant Professor, MD Anderson Cancer CenterJatin Shah earned his M.D. from The Ohio State University, completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, and a fellowship in hematology/oncology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
His honors include an Outstanding Research Fellowship from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a Young Investigator Award from the Southern Society of Clinical Investigation.
Shah’s research focus is in new drug development, and he has been funded as principal investigator on half a dozen past phase I or phase I/II clinical trials of multiple myeloma treatments, including multiple investigator-initiated trials. He is currently a co-investigator on an NIH P01 grant looking at the mechanisms behind multiple myeloma’s symptoms and on the multiple myeloma Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
With his application for the Young Investigator Training Course, he proposes a phase III trial of lenalidomide with and without the oral proteasome inhibitor MLN9708 as maintenance therapy for multiple myeloma patients who have undergone an autologous stem cell transplant.
William Nassib William, Jr., M.D., Assistant Professor, MD Anderson Cancer CenterWilliam N. William earned his M.D. from the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Sao Paulo in Brazil, where he also served his residency. He completed a clinical fellowship in oncology at the Hospital Sirio-Libanes in Sao Paulo and an observership, a post-doctoral fellowship, and a clinical fellowship – all in oncology – at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he is now chief of the Head and Neck Section in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology.
His honors and awards include a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and a Career Development Award from the Conquer Cancer Foundation for a project using non-coding RNAs as predictive markers of benefit from EGFR-targeted therapies in head and neck carcinomas.
He has served as co-investigator on several grant-funded trials of cancer chemopreventive agents, including an NCI-supported study of the use of erlotinib for the prevention of oral cancer. William was lead clinical investigator for a study of pre-operative cetuximab and/or IMC-A12 in head and neck carcinoma and is principal investigator of a study of the pharmacokinetics of cetuximab and carboplatin in patients with head and neck carcinoma.
With his Young Investigator application he has proposed a randomized phase II study of neoadjuvant cisplatin and docetaxel with or without nintedanib (a VEGFR inhibitor) for resectable non-small cell lung cancer.
SWOG is one of the five cooperative groups within the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) National Clinical Trials Network. The group designs and conducts multidisciplinary clinical trials to improve the practice of medicine in preventing, detecting, and treating cancer, and to enhance the quality of life for cancer survivors. The more than 4,000 researchers in the group’s network practice at more than 500 institutions, including 22 of the NCI-designated cancer centers as well as cancer centers in almost a dozen other countries. Formerly the Southwest Oncology Group, SWOG is headquartered at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (734-998-7140) and has an operations office in San Antonio and a statistical center in Seattle. Learn more at swog.org. SWOG – Leading cancer research. Together.
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