E-News - June 2026
Spotlight on Alliance Operations
Message From the Group Chair
As we move through the summer, I want to begin with a heartfelt thank you for the extraordinary work you do every day. Your dedication, perseverance and shared goal of improving the lives of patients with cancer continue to drive everything we accomplish. In a year marked by both opportunity and uncertainty, our community has remained strong through collaborating, innovating and delivering meaningful advances in cancer research and care.
At the heart of our success is the strength of our network. Today, Alliance comprises 112 main member sites, more than 1,400 affiliate institutions, and over 26,000 cancer specialists nationwide. Together, we have enrolled more than 10,300 participants to Alliance-led studies and more than 5,000 participants to trials led by our NTCN partners. Our biobanking efforts continue to grow, with 139,000 biospecimens collected to support current and future discoveries. We also proudly launched our Best of Alliance Webinar series to expand how we share knowledge across our network and beyond.
We are also grateful for the National Cancer Institute’s continued commitment to our mission, with new funding cycles for Alliance Operations and our Statistics and Data Management Center set to begin, alongside planned extensions supporting our NCORP and Biobanking programs. We deeply appreciate our colleagues at the NCI, whose partnership has been instrumental in sustaining and advancing our work.
In 2025 alone, we opened 14 new Alliance studies (a total of 36 including joint trials with other cooperative groups), presented 74 abstracts, and published 63 manuscripts. More broadly, over the last six years, Alliance investigators have produced more 230 manuscripts and 240 abstracts, with nearly 80% published in high-impact journals. Our science has been featured in ASCO Plenary Sessions, informed multiple NCCN guidance updates, and supported U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory submissions and approvals.
This year also brought several landmark scientific achievements. Results from the Alliance-led ATOMIC trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), have expanded curative treatment options for patients with high-risk colon cancer and influenced both U.S. and European clinical practice guidelines, and led to an FDA supplemental biologics license application.
Our non-profit partner, the Alliance Foundation Trials (AFT), also achieved a historic milestone this year with the publication of the pivotal PATINA trial in the NEJM. Demonstrating the power of our independent research track, the PATINA results established a practice-changing standard of care for metastatic HR+/HER2+ breast cancer and successfully secured a new FDA approval. AFT’s research pipeline continues to expand rapidly to meet patient needs, currently managing five active trials, three pending studies, and 13 protocols in follow-up.
These successes reflect the power of our collaborative network and the dedication of our investigators, study teams, patient partners, staff, community sites, academic institutions, and external partners. They also underscore the important role of AFT, which continues to expand the reach of Alliance science through innovative studies that accelerate the translation of promising discoveries into meaningful clinical impact.
As we look ahead, I’m filled with optimism. Every study we open, every patient we enroll, every biospecimen we collect, and every question we answer brings us closer to better treatments, better outcomes, and new hope for patients and families facing cancer. Together, we are not only advancing science—we are changing lives.
Thank you for being part of this remarkable community and for your unwavering commitment to our shared mission.
Warm regards,
Evanthia Galanis, MD, DSc
Chair, Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology
President, Alliance Foundation
Professor of Oncology, Mayo Clinic
Sandra J. Schulze Professor of Novel Therapeutics
