A Message from the Chairs of NRG Oncology’s Research Strategy Committee – 2025 The Year In Review

01/13/2026

We are happy to report that the Protocol Development Department coordinated the activation of 8 new studies in 2025. Two of these are part of the NRG NCORP Research Base, and four of the CTEP trials activated include the streamlined practice for data collection to minimize burden to sites. This initiative to develop more streamlined clinical trials is ongoing with a total of seven NRG trials identified.  Please see the table (posted here) for the full list of study activations. Despite a government furlough, the exciting news is that we have another 8 NCI approved concepts that are in protocol development with activations anticipated in 2026/2027. There were also 19 other concepts that were approved for future development during our Research Strategy Meetings held this past year.  We are thankful to have a robust and diverse clinical trial portfolio and are excited about the new trial concepts we continue to receive from our dedicated committees and investigators.

Of note, 2025 also marked our grant renewal. Protocol Development has worked with disease site committee leaders and other various committees, Statistics and Data Management Centers, together with leadership, and the application scored a perfect score for the NRG grant renewal.

In addition, following NRG’s 2024 launch to create and distribute study summaries of results intended for patients, the protocol development department committed to creating summaries for all publications with primary endpoints published in 2024 and beyond. Although moving forward the goal is to create the summaries in conjunction with the release of the manuscript, the 2024 launch created a back log as the protocol development team worked to retroactively develop summaries of existing publications. To date, 28 publications required summaries and 15 have been created and disseminated to sites via the NRG website and weekly broadcast. The remaining 13 are in various stages of review and are anticipated to be released in early 2026.

On behalf of NRG Oncology’s Research Strategy Committee’s leadership, we want to thank our committee leaders and members, our study chairs, patient advocates and our amazing staff (especially the PD team) for all their hard work and success this past year.  We look forward to an even better 2026!

Ronald D. Alvarez, MD                     Jame Abraham, MD