CTWG Steering Committee System
The Steering Committees strive to enhance the National Cancer Clinical Trials Enterprise through the implementation of Prioritization/Scientific Quality Initiatives 1, 2, and 3 of the CTWG Report (PDF - 366KB).
Goals of the Committees
Scientific Steering Committees (SSCs) are composed of leading cancer experts and advocates from outside the Institute as well as NCI senior investigators who meet regularly to:
- increase the transparency and openness of the trial design and prioritization process;
- enhance patient advocate and community oncologist involvement in clinical trial design and prioritization;
- convene Clinical Trial Planning Meetings to identify critical questions, unmet needs, and prioritize key strategies.
SSCs may establish one or more Task Forces and/or Working Groups that focus on specific diseases or scientific areas of interest.
Disease-Specific Steering Committees (DSSC):
Breast Cancer Steering Committee
Gastrointestinal Steering Committee
Genitourinary Steering Committee
Gynecologic Steering Committee
Head and Neck Steering Committee
Thoracic Malignancy Steering Committee
Roles of the Committees are to:
Leverage current Intergroup, Cooperative Group, SPORE, and Cancer Center structures by:
- increasing information exchange at an early stage of trial development;
- increasing the efficiency of clinical trial collaboration;
- reducing trial redundancy (phase II and phase III);
- developing, evaluating, and prioritizing concepts for phase III and large phase II clinical trials.
Role of the Committee is to:
- achieve optimal phase I and phase II trial designs for the most promising agents;
- increase the predictive value of early phase trials, in order to design more successful phase III trials.
Role of the Committee is to:
- review and prioritize symptom management intervention clinical trial concepts to be conducted through the CCOP mechanism;
- provide input to studies with secondary quality-of-life (QOL) endpoints in cooperative group treatment studies;
- develop prioritization criteria for QOL studies that are eligible for proposed correlative science/QOL set aside funds.
Role of the Committee is to:
- develop and share best practices for patient advocates in Scientific Steering Committees;
- identify common concerns and needs and propose potential solutions to address theses concerns;
- disseminate Scientific Steering Committee information to the appropriate communities;
- ensure that the concept evaluations consider the patient community at large, with a special focus on minority and underserved populations.
Clinical Trials Planning Meetings (CTPMs)
The goal of CTPMs is to:
- bring together investigators from a variety of disciplines to develop strategic agendas for clinical trials in a specific field for the next 3-5 years;
- facilitate innovation and collaboration among the broad oncology community active in the specific cancer under study;
- to reach consensus on the most important clinical trials to conduct;
- to develop the next phase III trials, or if that is not yet possible, to frame the phase II studies that will generate phase III questions.
