USA's NCI cooperative group program needs overhaul to ensure important cancer research

Because a robust national clinical trials network is essential to achieving advances in cancer treatment and prevention, the USA's National Cancer Institute (NCI) should preserve and strengthen the capabilities of the Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program through an overhaul of its organization, management and funding, says a new report of the Institute of Medicine.

The program has been instrumental in establishing many therapies routinely used to treat cancer patients, said the committee that wrote the report. But it faces many difficulties at present that undermine its ability to facilitate the multi-institutional collaborations necessary to conduct large, late-stage trials that answer important research questions single institutions and the private sector cannot or do not tackle.

Calls for consolidation of redundant functions