Overview of Our Research
The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) seeks to improve life for adults affected by or at risk of developing cancer. The Group designs and conducts clinical trials (medical research studies where people volunteer to test new scientific approaches). As shown in the graphic, participating institutions and individual investigators are at the heart of our organization. Together, we are pursuing a robust research portfolio of trials that evaluate new approaches to cancer treatment, control, prevention, and care delivery. Our research studies have the potential to change clinical practice.
Overarching Scientific Themes that Drive Group Research:
- Precision oncology
- Immunotherapy
- Reduce over-treatment and over-diagnosis
- Leverage novel biomarker platforms to inform therapeutic decision-making
- Advance standards of care in broad populations of cancer patients and those at risk
- Reduce the burden of cancer on individual and societal levels
Treatment trials evaluate novel therapeutic approaches, informed, whereever possible, by known cancer biology. Often, the Group explores new diagnostic imaging approaches as part of these biology-driven trials. The routine collection of tumor samples and images from patients who participate in these clinical trials provides biorepositories and associated clinical data from which researchers may develop correlative studies. These studies are the source of the next generation of biomarkers and imaging methods.
Meanwhile, cancer control trials examine challenges associated with cancer and treatment-related symptoms and concerns relating to survivorship. Prevention trials range from screening and surveillance studies in healthy adults to new approaches for preventing cancer recurrence or secondary cancers. Cancer care delivery studies focus on the complex interactions between the patient, provider, and system factors that govern cancer care delivery.
The Group is a vibrant component of both the National Cancer Institute (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) and the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP). Use the menu to the right to explore the many components of ECOG-ACRIN's research portfolio.
