NEWS
Robert Mannel, M.D., director of OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, has been re-elected as one of three group chairs of NRG Oncology.
NRG Oncology is the largest of four cooperative groups that form the foundation of the National Clinical Trials Network, a program of the National Cancer Institute that represents hundreds of clinical research sites in the United States and globally.
NRG Oncology represents the combined expertise of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project, the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group, and the Gynecologic Oncology Group. The clinical cooperative has more than 150 years of cumulative experience in conducting multi-institutional Phase II and II trials sponsored primarily by the National Cancer Institute, as well as a history of undertaking the type of Phase 1 trials and translational biological studies that will be imperative for future clinical cancer research.
As a group chair, Mannel helps to oversee NRG Oncology’s research into seven disease sites: adult brain tumors, head and neck cancer, localized and locally advanced lung cancer, breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, genitourinary cancer, and gynecologic cancer.
Mannel has been an active member of the National Cancer Institute cooperative group system since 1989 and has been an author of more than 100 research publications stemming from this work. He served as an inaugural deputy group chair for NRG Oncology, and in 2017, he was appointed as a group chair. In 2022, he was named presiding group chair. His fellow chairs are Quynh-Thu Le, M.D., of Stanford University and Norman Wolmark, M.D., of Drexel University School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Hillman Cancer Center.
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. For more information about the university, visit www.ou.edu.
The University of Oklahoma professor Christina Giacona is making her fourth trip to the Grammy Awards next month, as four albums she worked on have received nominations from the Recording Academy.
In a rare achievement for an undergraduate student, Colby Higdon, a geology major on the paleontology track with the University of Oklahoma has published original paleontological research conducted at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History that reveals new insights into whether competition between ancient animals was responsible for their extinction.
Newly published research in Science Advances, led by Jessica Cerezo-Román, at the University of Oklahoma, documents the oldest known cremation in Africa and provides some of the earliest evidence for intentional cremation using a pyre in the world.
