NCI National Clinical Trials Network - Network Lead Academic Participating Site (UG1)

This intent of this supplement application is to continue to provide robust accrual to NCTN clinical cancer treatment and advanced imaging trials. The Dartmouth Cancer Center’s (DCC) objectives, as an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center, are well aligned with NCTN’s goals to conduct multi-center, late-phase, clinical treatment trials (i.e., randomized phase 2 and phase 3 trials) and advanced imaging trials, across a broad range of cancers, modalities, and diverse patient populations, as part of the NCI's overall clinical research program for adults, adolescents and young adults, and children with cancer. Since the inception of the NCTN in 2014, we have been designated an NCTN Lead Academic Participating Site (LAPS). Dartmouth LAPS utilizes a pre-existing and functioning cadre of established inter- and multidisciplinary investigators at DCC, the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth (Geisel), the Dartmouth Health system (DH), and the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth who share common clinical, basic science and clinical translational research interests in cancer treatment and imaging under campus-wide DCC leadership. We have core laboratories and an infrastructure that supports the conduct of a spectrum of correlative science studies typically associated with definitive large phase III trials and basic research in cancer genomics, immunology, and imaging. We have the infrastructure necessary for the conduct of clinical trials that need to screen large numbers of patients, with the same or different cancer type, to identify those patients whose tumors contain the distinct molecular targets of the targeted therapies or immunotherapeutic approaches being tested. As an academic center, we are well-positioned to provide scientific leadership in developing and conducting clinical trials in association with several adult Network Groups, as well as substantial numbers of patients for accrual to clinical trials conducted across the entire NCTN. Our rural geographic location provides access to clinical trials to an underserved population. This application requests a supplement for DCC to provide partial support for leadership, administration, and NCTN protocol planning and evaluation, in addition to infrastructure in our Office of Clinical Research (the DCC Clinical Protocol and Data Management service center), to oversee protocol-specific research, data management, monitoring, and accrual. Our priorities are responsive to the objectives of the NCI’s NCTN plan to support a national network of centers for cancer therapy and imaging with a commitment to the conduct of trials in special populations and in patients with rare tumors.