PRESS RELEASES
TCCOP Celebrates Its Twentieth Anniversary

The Toledo Community Oncology Program (TCCOP) is one of the original 27 clinical research programs sponsored by the National Cancer Research Institutes (NCI) which continue in operation and celebrated their twentieth anniversary last fall. In all, NCI founded 62 Community Oncology Programs (CCOPs) and approximately 50 NCI CCOP’s are operational today. A CCOP is a consortium of community hospitals and physicians funded by a peer reviewed cooperative agreement to participate in NCI sponsored clinical trials testing cancer treatments, cancer prevention studies, and control studies on treatment morbidities. The CCOPs were founded on the belief that advances in cancer care are a direct result of participation in clinical trials, and that involvement of dedicated community physicians and staff would provide the necessary volume of patients to answer clinical research questions in a timely manner.

Both the Director of NCI, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, and the Director of the NCI Division of Cancer Prevention and Assistant Surgeon General, Dr. Peter Greenwald, have acknowledged CCOP contributions. One-third of patients in the NCI-sponsored clinical trials today come from CCOPs and the care provided is of the highest quality. Due to the effective collaboration of the community and traditional research centers at universities, much of the cancer care given 20 years ago is not standard care given today, nor will today’s standards be unchanged in the future due to ongoing cancer research efforts.

Charles Cobau, MD, Toledo’s pioneer CCOP principal investigator, reviewed the history of the Toledo CCOP at the fall National Surgical Adjuvant Breast/ Bowel Project (NSABP) meeting in New Orleans, where the twentieth anniversary CCOP celebration took place. Over the past 20 years TCCOP has enrolled over 3,750 participants in clinical trials for cancer treatment and cancer prevention. When the CCOP proposal was announced by NCI in 1982, Toledo had experience in clinical cancer trials as a Community Outreach Program participant with the Eastern Cooperative Group (ECOG), and successfully competed for one of the initial CCOPs as a consortium of four Toledo institutions with Flower Hospital as the administrative organization and Dr. Cobau as principal Investigator. In 1987, after growth in affiliated investigators and inclusion of regional institutions in the program, administrative control was transferred to the Toledo Community Hospital Oncology Program, an independent not-for-profit corporation initially organized in the late 1970’s to develop and promote the latest cancer management guidelines in the Toledo area. This effort was also organized by Dr. Cobau, with the participation of many primary care and specialty physicians and other healthcare professionals throughout Toledo.

Over the years, TCCOP has grown to include 13 institutions and six private oncology offices in the northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. It provides a regional institutional Review Board to review and monitor cancer research protocols at all participating hospitals and clinics. Paul Schaefer, MD, has been the principal investigator since 1991. Currently, 47 participating physicians from medical and radiation oncology, general surgery, pathology, thoracic surgery and urology play an active role, along with 90 allied health professionals, such as oncology nurses and clinical research assistants. This committed team has been regularly accruing over 100 patients annually on treatment related to research trials. In 1989, TCCOP became a primary member of the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG) with ECOG, NSABP, Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) and Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) as secondary research bases. TCCOP physicians have been named as authors on numerous peer reviewed published manuscripts from these research bases. Dr. Schafer was Chair of the Executive Committee of NCCTG from 1999 to 2003. Many TCCOP physicians have chaired protocols and have served as chairs of the NCCTG Surgery Committee, RTOG Economic Impact Committee and ECOG Quality of Life Committee.

Looking back over the past 20 years, TCCOP can be proud of its accomplishments. Toledo has made a major contribution in the success of the NCI sponsored community- based research effort, and at the same time this participation has provided our community state-of-the-art cancer care. TCCOP is committed to continuing these efforts in meeting the challenge of cancer.