Table 2:
Cooperative Group Milestones
| Year | Event | Ref. |
|---|---|---|
| 1955 | NCI establishes the Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program and trials begin for adults and children with acute leukemia | 11 |
| 1958 | Acute Leukemia Group publishes first Cooperative Group Trial: Frei, et al. A comparative study of two regimens of combination chemotherapy in acute leukemia. Blood; 1958:13:1126. | 12 |
| 1958 | The Surgical Adjuvant Chemotherapy Breast Project launches a trial studying addition of chemotherapy to radical mastectomy | 13 |
| 1965 | First trials for treatment of Wilms tumor involving surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy | 14 |
| 1968 | Radiation Therapy Oncology Group is founded and launches first trial testing addition of methotrexate to radiotherapy and surgery for head and neck cancer | 15 |
| 1970 | Gynecologic Oncology Group founded | 16 |
| 1980 | Southwest Oncology Group launches the first Cooperative Group molecular oncology trial using a human tumor cloning assay to select chemotherapy for patients with treatment-refractory ovarian cancer | 17 |
| 1981 | NCI funding of Cooperative Groups changed from grant to cooperative agreement (IOM p 43) | 9 |
| 1983 | NCI launches the Community Clinical Oncology Program to establish a cancer control effort and increase participation of community oncologists in clinical research | 11 |
| 1984 | NCI policy statement regarding the relationship of NCI, the pharmaceutical industry, and the Cooperative Groups conveys the need for collaboration to pursue joint development of anticancer drugs of mutual interest | 11 |
| 1985 | National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project reports results of Protocol B-06, showing that breast conserving surgery and radiotherapy was equivalent to mastectomy for breast cancer local disease control | 18 |
| 2000 | Children’s Oncology Group formed by a merger of the Children’s Cancer Study Group, Pediatric Oncology Group, Intergroup Rhabdomyosarcoma Study Group and the National Wilms’ Tumor Study Group | 19 |
| 2002 | American College of Radiology Imaging Network launches the National Lung Screening Trial, a study for high risk patients showing that evaluation using low dose helical CT scan resulted in a 15–20% reduction in risk of dying from lung cancer compared to standard chest X-Ray (NEJM 2011) | 20 |
| 2009 | NCI establishes Disease-Specific Scientific Steering Committees charged with prioritizing, refining and collaborating on concepts for Phase III and selected phase II therapeutic clinical trials | 9 |
| 2010 | Release of Institute of Medicine consensus report: “A Cancer Clinical Trials System for the 21st Century: Reinvigorating the NCI Cooperative Group Program“ | 9 |
| 2010 | NCI announced termination of existing cooperative agreements with the intention of issuing new agreements governing a consolidated program | 11 |
| 2014 | New funding of 4 adult groups and 1 pediatric group in the US as the NCI National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) and launch of the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) | 11 |
| 2019 | NCTN/NCORP Biospecimen Resource holdings include 119 clinical trials, 72,363 patients, and 852,946 biospecimens | 23 |
| 2019 | Renewal of NCTN/NCORP U10 awards | 24 |