On Dec. 1, James Anderson, Ph.D., chairman of the UNMC Department of Preventive and Societal Medicine, accepted an appointment as group statistician and director of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) Statistics and Data Center.
As director, Dr. Anderson will manage and coordinate the operation of the Statistics and Data Center, which has offices in Omaha, California and Florida.
The COG’s mission is to eliminate the personal, family and societal burden of cancer in children and adolescents by preventing and curing childhood and adolescent cancer through scientific discovery and compassionate care, performing clinical research trials, conducting laboratory research and identifying the causes of childhood cancer. About 250 institutions participate in the COG’s research. About 100 research studies are active at any one time. There are about 4,000 pediatric patients involved in the studies annually.
“We work with researchers to design studies, determine how many patients are required to answer the study questions and also to determine what data need to be collected,” Dr. Anderson said.
Staff of the Statistics and Data Center includes statisticians, research coordinators, data managers, database administrators and programmers. The Center collects data on patients treated in studies and analyzes them to identify treatments that improve outcome, as well as factors that predict patient outcome, he said.
Cure rates for cancer have risen substantially over the past few decades, Dr. Anderson said.
“Almost all these improvements have been a direct result of the carefully designed protocol research,” he said. “We’ve made steady progress by introducing new drugs or by learning to use standard agents in a smarter way, by using them at optimal doses or sequencing them better.”
Dr. Anderson has been involved in cooperative group cancer research since 1977. He was chosen as Group Statistician for the Intergroup Rhabdomyosarcoma Study Group in 1995, which later merged with other pediatric oncology groups to form the COG.
“I have a passion for the work of the COG and look forward to applying my talents and experience to help the Group move forward with its research and ultimately curing more children with cancer,” Dr. Anderson said.
More information on the COG can be found at www.childrensoncologygroup.org.