Cancer Control and Survivorship Committee

The Cancer Control and Survivorship Committee aims to reduce the morbidity of cancer and its treatments and to improve patients’ quality of life. This committee focuses on patients diagnosed with cancer, receiving treatment, or in follow-up. It focuses on understanding distress experienced by cancer patients and potential interventions; biomarker-driven symptom intervention research, and understanding and mitigating cardiotoxicity risk.

Two specialty subcommittees and one working group, shown below, incubate scientific ideas into trial concepts while the main committee convenes and facilitates interactions across the subcommittees and across the Group. Scroll down to see the leadership.

Subcommittees

1Cardiotoxicity Subcommittee

Some cancer treatments can damage the heart and the cardiovascular system. For example, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and newer forms of cancer treatment, such as targeted therapies and immunotherapies, can cause or exacerbate high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, and heart failure. Researchers in this group seek to make scientific advancements that will improve the ability of physicians to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease alongside cancer therapy. They also focus on overcoming disparities in care delivery.

2Symptom Science and Treatment Toxicity Subcommittee

Researchers in this group study the symptoms related to cancer and its treatment, such as fatigue, pain, and toxicities to the heart, nerves, brain, or other organs. They also identify genetic predictors of treatment toxicity, measure the side effects of immunotherapies, and test new interventions for toxicities that disrupt patients’ quality of life or are life-threatening. In addition, this committee contributed to the NCI-MATCH precision medicine cancer trial by studying education and counseling for patients about tumor gene testing (EAQ152 / COMET).

3Psychosocial Outcomes and Health Promotion Subcommittee and its component Patient-Reported Outcomes Working Group

These groups study patients' experiences with cancer treatment and the psychosocial burden of cancer, emphasizing patient-reported outcomes (PRO) research. They embed hypothesis-driven, methodologically robust PRO questions into cancer treatment trials conducted in the Therapeutic Studies Program. This research documents patients' outcomes from their perspectives. For example, PROS collected during the TAILORx breast cancer trial quantified the acute and long-term symptoms associated with hormonal therapy.