To OSUCCC – James Faculty and Staff,

We are excited to announce a new leadership model for the OSUCCC Clinical Trials Office (CTO). As we continue to grow and look forward to the opening of the new James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, it is important that we further develop the CTO into a more robust structure to support our mission of translational research.

As a part of this new model, we are thrilled to announce the arrival of Joyce Nancarrow Tull, who is our new CTO Administrative Director. We also want to announce the appointments of Steven Devine, MD, as CTO Medical Director for Hematologic Malignancies, and Bhuvaneswari Ramaswamy, MD, as CTO Medical Director for Solid Tumors.
To view their biographies, please click here.   

There are three stated goals of the leadership restructuring of the CTO – all of which will be assessed with specific metrics going forward. The goals are:

1. To increase the efficiency of the CTO, including time to activation of trials, monitoring and data reporting, and an increased enrollment of subjects onto trials;

2. To provide for transparency for the allocation of resources;

3. To allocate resources according to funding levels and accruals.

Another important goal of the restructuring is to foster a culture of cooperation among physicians and other health care providers and CTO staff. 

In order to accomplish the above goals in this new model, we will have two medical directors and will strengthen the role of the Disease Specific Group Leaders. One medical director will support solid tumor clinical trials and one will support trials for hematologic malignancies. Each will devote 50% of their time and effort to CTO activities. In these new roles, the medical directors will work with:

• The disease-specific research group leaders – to optimize the disease groups, assess trial accrual, optimize the research portfolios to maximize the number and percent of subjects on trial, develop new methods to reduce the time from protocol submission to activation, and improve the reporting of results and manuscript submission;

• The newly-recruited CTO administrative director and
managers – to plan, allocate resources/staff and monitor trial activity from development through termination/publication. This includes trial development, funding, accrual, time to trial, portfolio allocation and prioritization of trials across disease groups.

We believe this new structure will enhance communication, coordination and integration among CTO staff and PIs and will allow us to expand the efficiency and capacity of the CTO. However, changes will not happen overnight, and will require some trials and errors (hopefully minimal errors!).
 
Feedback from all faculty and staff involved in clinical trials is welcome. Please join us in welcoming Ms. Nancarrow Tull and in supporting her and Drs. Devine and Ramaswamy in their new roles.

Peter G. Shields, MD Deputy Director, OSUCCC Professor, Division of Medical Oncology OSUCCC – James

William E. Carson III, MD Associate Director for Clinical Research Professor, Division of Surgical Oncology OSUCCC – James