The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology is a multi-institutional cancer research consortium and a core member of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). The Alliance brings together a broad community of cancer specialists across more than 100 main institutions and 1,400 affiliated sites through the United States and Canada.
Driving innovation through the NCTN
Through the NCTN, the Alliance designs and conducts large-scale clinical trials that address important questions in cancer treatment, prevention, and control. This national network enables investigators to develop and conduct trials efficiently, reach broad patient populations, and translate scientific advances into evidence that can inform clinical practice.
The NCTN provides the infrastructure for publicly supported cancer clinical research in the United States, bringing together clinical trial groups, cancer centers, community oncology practices, investigators, and centralized resources to conduct trials across a broad range of cancers. The network includes five U.S. clinical trial groups:
- Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology
- ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group
- NRG Oncology
- SWOG
- Children’s Oncology Group (COG)
The NCTN also collaborates with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG).
Several centralized resources help NCTN groups conduct clinical trials efficiently and consistently across institutions.
The CTSU provides centralized administrative and operational support for NCTN clinical trials, including study registration, regulatory requirements, enrollment, and access to trial information and documents.
The NCI CIRB provides centralized ethical review for applicable NCI-sponsored clinical trials. Centralized review promotes consistent protections for research participants and reduces duplication across participating institutions.
Lead academic participating sites (LAPS) within the NCTN include NCI-designated cancer centers and other major academic institutions that provide scientific leadership and participate in the development and conduct of clinical trials. Together with the community oncology sites, these resources provide the infrastructure needed to bring clinical research to patients across a broad range of care settings.
Through the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP), the Alliance brings clinical trials to patients in community oncology settings. This broad network expands opportunities for people to participate in research closer to home, including those who may face barriers to traveling to major academic medical centers.
Decades of Alliance clinical trials have generated extensive clinical data biospecimens that can support research long after an individual study has been completed.
The Alliance maintains integrated biorepository resources and data-sharing infrastructure that enable approved investigators to access eligible clinical trial data and biospecimens for additional research. Through the NCTN Navigator, investigators can explore available NCTN biospecimens and submit requests for eligible resources.
These shared resources allow researchers to build on previous clinical trials, validate new hypotheses, study biomarkers, and pursue scientific questions that may not have been possible to address within the original trial.
The work of the Alliance depends not only on clinical investigators and research participants, but also on the infrastructure that allows complex, collaborative research to move forward.
The Alliance NCTN Foundation helps strengthen this capacity and supports initiatives that advance the Alliance’s scientific mission. By supporting the people, systems, and resources behind clinical and translational research, the NCTN Foundation helps create opportunities to ask important questions, conduct rigorous studies, share knowledge, and carry discoveries forward.
Together, the Alliance and the NCTN Foundation help sustain a research structure designed to turn collaboration and scientific discovery into better evidence and, ultimately, better care for people with cancer.