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Thoracic Surgery Oncology Group

Established in 2017, the AATS Thoracic Surgery Oncology Group (TSOG) aimed to establish a North American thoracic surgery clinical trials network that will actively accrue patients to relevant oncologic clinical trials designed to improve our understanding of thoracic oncologic diseases and enhance the care of our patients. The clinical trial portfolio will be comprised of studies involving thoracic malignancies.

Due to the success from the first RFP, it is now the goal to continue to grow and expand TSOG to involve more institutions.

 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery will be providing limited administrative support for TSOG. Funding for all operational, correlative studies, institutional review board review, research study assistant support, and local administrative support will be the responsibility of each site in conjunction with the Principal Investigator (PI) of the proposal. The primary focus will be on rapid accrual and successful completion of thoracic surgeon lead clinical trials. While clinical trials can address many different problems, the focus of TSOG will be on phase I/II studies, window of opportunity trials with correlative analyses, intraoperative imaging studies, relevant registry studies and multidisciplinary study designs.  TSOG Site Selection Criteria: 


  1. High volume centers for thoracic oncologic procedures with an emphasis on lung, esophageal, and other thoracic malignancies,
  2. Evidence of site-specific financial sustainability and existing infrastructure for completion of clinical trials,
  3. Active participation of thoracic surgeons with expertise in oncologic clinical trial involvement and a history of robust accrual.
  4. Institutional Redcap software license.

Given the limited administrative support/resources and the need to accrue patients rapidly for trial completion, we anticipate no more than 4-6 sites will be activated in this upcoming RFA. The process involves submission of the below application no later than July 22, 2019. The TSOG Executive Committee will review all applications and sites will be notified by August 5, 2019. Following selection, chosen programs will convene for a “state-of-the-science” meeting which includes discussion of potential trials which will be selected as the index TSOG trials.