About Us

Scientific Plan and Structure Established for NRG Oncology

With the submission of the NRG Oncology grant proposal to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) on January 15, the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG), and the Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) took the formal step toward becoming the cancer clinical cooperative group NRG Oncology. These three groups have more than 150 years' cumulative experience in conducting practice-defining, multiinstitutional phase II and III trials sponsored primarily by the NCI, as well as a history of undertaking the kind of phase I trials and translational biological studies that will be imperative for future clinical cancer research.

The three legacy groups will continue to carry out NCI-supported trials as independent but collaborative entities through February 2014, with 96 total trials open for patient accrual and 68 trials in development. If all goes as planned, beginning in March 2014, all federal research activities of the merged group will be managed under the auspices of the NRG Oncology Operations Center. The three current chairs, Quynh-Thu Le, MD; Robert Mannel, MD; and Norman Wolmark, MD, will serve as NRG Oncology principal investigators (PIs) and share equal responsibility for executing the group’s research program.