The University of Utah proposes to continue, and more importantly, improve its more than two decade record of successful participation in the Children's Cancer Group (CCG) by increasing both on-study registrations and leadership contributions to CCG. Utah expects to increase substantially on-study registrations over the next few years as a result of three new initiates. First, this year, Utah recruited its first affiliate institution (Mountain States Tumor Institute in Boise, Idaho). In the 6 months since being accepted into CCG and getting IRB approvals, they have registered 7 patients onto CCG studies, so Utah anticipates increasing registrations by about 15 annually from that source. Second, this year, Utah has become a CCG Phase I institution with IRB approval for all Phase I studies now complete. Utah expects to enroll approximately 10 subjects annually onto Phase I studies. Finally, our new pediatric BMT unit is now a CCG-approved BMT center and is doing auto, matched unrelated and related allo, and fetal transplants which will be yet another source for study participation. Consequently, these new Utah CCG initiatives should yield more than a 50 percent increase in on-study registrations. Utah investigators also expect significantly greater leadership contributions to CCG, particularly in the areas of Biology, Pathology, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and Brain Tumors. Richard Lemons, M.D., Ph.D. was recently elected Chairman of the CCG Biology Research Committee and will be Chairman of the new Biology and Translational Research Program which is charged with overall supervision of all biologic and translational research within CCG, as well as oversight of the CCG Resource Laboratories and Cytogenetics Committee. This is a critical leadership responsibility since biology is a number one CCG priority. William Carroll, M.D., is the newly appointed Co-Chair of the ALL Strategy Group and also leader of the task force designing future relapsed-ALL studies, one of the most important therapeutic goals of CCG. Sherrie Perkins, M.D., Ph.D., has assumed the major leadership role in hematopathology as review pathologist for all CCG non-Hodgkin's lymphoma studies. Dr. Keith White was recently named Vice Chairman of the CCG Radiology Discipline Committee and is working to earn funding for centralized electronic archives for all CCG medical imaging to facilitate radiologic review.
