Members of the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium steering committee appointed Robert Kratzke as the committee’s first chair and Ruth O’Regan as its vice chair. Each will serve a one-year term, with O’Regan serving as chair in the subsequent year.
Kratzke is a lung cancer researcher at Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota and associate professor in the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Medicine. He has served as the University of Minnesota steering committee representative since 2014, and is a member of the BTCRC’s Thoracic Clinical Trial Working Group.
O’Regan is division head, hematology/oncology, and associate director of faculty development and education at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center. She is a breast cancer researcher and physician, and has served as the University of Wisconsin’s representative on the steering committee since 2015. She is a member of the BTCRC’s Breast Clinical Trial Working Group.
The BTCRC Steering Committee is composed of one researcher from each member institution. The committee meets on a regular basis to review activities of the consortium and decide matters of policy.
The BTCRC opened its first multi-institutional clinical trial in the spring of 2015, and completed enrollment for the study in July 2016, six months ahead of projections. The BTCRC is currently offering clinical trials for patients with breast cancer, esophageal cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, and urothelial cancer. More studies are in development and are expected to open soon.
The Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium was created in 2013 to transform the conduct of cancer research through collaborative, hypothesis-driven, highly translational oncology trials that leverage the scientific and clinical expertise of Big Ten universities.
