NCI Clinical Trial Research Strategy, Harnessing of Equity, and Implementation

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT I am a female board-certified radiation oncologist and Professor at the University of California (UC), San Diego, in the Department of Radiation Medicine. My research and clinical efforts involve every phase of gynecologic (GYN) clinical trials with a focus on translational science, and I am a leader in the NRG Oncology NCI network. My national leadership within NRG Oncology spans over 13 years: I served as a core Member of the Radiation Oncology GOG committee (2009–2015), the Phase I Developmental Therapeutics Committee, and the Cervical Cancer Committee, which lead to service as Co-Chair of the GYN Developmental Therapeutics Committee 2015–2018 and receipt of a National Service Award from NRG Oncology as the Co-Chair of the Phase I Committee in 2018. I then transitioned to the NRG cervical cancer co-chair from 2018-present. In these roles, I develop the strategic outline of advancing NCI clinical trials though writing, development of new trials, accrual, and public dissemination of the results in a timely fashion. I am also keenly involved with the mentorship of junior investigators at the NRG to increase underrepresented diversity as investigators on national clinical trials and serve as the principal investigator, primary mentor, or study team on 13 proposals in the GYN portfolio at NRG since 2018. At UCSD, I am heavily involved with the clinical trials office and have grants through the UCSD community outreach and engagement to increase equity among NCI clinical trial enrollment. I serve as the Co-Leader of the GYN Disease Team at the Moores Cancer Center (MCC), the UCSD Co-PI for the ECTCN trial network on MCC’s UM1 ETCTN grant (VICKtOrY Early Clinical Trials Consortium; UM1CA186689), with the goal of bringing lab discoveries to the treatment of patients and improving accrual of underserved populations. I developed a pipeline of early phase clinical trials in node positive high risk cervical cancer with NCI funding as principal investigator from 2009 for GOG 9292 “Phase I trial using sequential ipilimumab in locally advanced cervical cancer.” and received a NCI career development award for the clinical trial in 2018 as principal investigator on GYN NRG 017, “Anti PD-L1 (Atezolizumab) as an immune primer and concurrently with extended field chemoradiotherapy for node positive locally advanced cervical cancer.” My goal is to expand our current efforts to offer NCI-funded clinical trials throughout the region, and ensure equity access to them through clinical trial development, expansion of our clinical trials office in strategic areas of underrepresented minority accrual. With the R50 Award, I would (1) expand my current efforts as a PI and mentor PI for novel clinical trial submissions in the NCI funded NRG Oncology network for GYN patients nationally and locally; (2) ensure equity leadership as investigator status within NRG Oncology clinical trials, and explore biomarker-driven clinical trial translational samples with equity in molecular testing; (3) take on new and higher leadership roles within the NRG oncology group.