UChicago Medicine oncologists to lead committees for national cooperative clinical trials group

Peter O
Peter H. O'Donnell, MD, and Wendy Stock, MD

University of Chicago Medicine oncologists Wendy Stock, MD, and Peter H. O'Donnell, MD, have been chosen to lead committees of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a clinical trials network sponsored by the National Cancer Institute that promotes collaboration among approximately 10,000 cancer specialists across the U.S. and Canada.

Stock was selected to co-chair the Leukemia Committee, along with fellow co-chair Geoffrey Uy, MD, of Siteman Cancer Center. Together, they will help oversee the development of new clinical approaches to leukemia. They succeed Richard Stone, MD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of translational research in adult leukemia at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

“I am truly honored to have been selected to lead the Alliance Leukemia Committee with Dr. Geoffrey Uy of Washington University in St. Louis,” said Stock. “The Leukemia Committee of the Alliance (formerly CALGB) has a proud tradition of designing and leading groundbreaking, practice-changing studies for adults with acute and chronic leukemias worldwide.”

She added, “Working with our talented, thoughtful committee members from throughout North America, we will strive to continue this legacy with development of innovative therapeutic and correlative trials that will improve survival and quality of the lives of all patients with leukemia.”

Stock mentions that she is particularly honored to be following in the footsteps of Richard Larson, MD, who led the Leukemia Committee of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB), now called the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, for more than 10 years, ending his tenure in 2012. Under his leadership, CALGB completed 42 clinical trials, more than 170 presented abstracts, and 142 published reports, many of which have had an impact on clinical practice. Larson is professor of medicine and director of the Hematologic Malignancies Clinical Research Program at UChicago Medicine.

Stock is a co-leader of the Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics research program at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Anjuli Seth Nayak Professor in Leukemia. Uy, a bone marrow transplant specialist at Siteman Cancer Center, is a professor of medicine and a medical director for clinical research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

O'Donnell was selected to lead the Pharmacogenomics and Population Pharmacology Committee for the Alliance. Pharmacogenomics, or the study of the role of the genome in drug response, analyzes how an individual's genetic makeup affects response to medications. Population pharmacology studies the differences in drug concentrations within a patient population receiving clinically relevant doses of a drug.

He takes over this high-profile leadership role from Mark J. Ratain, MD, who served as Committee Chair for over 25 years.

“I am extremely excited to assume this role within the Alliance cancer clinical trials cooperative group and to pursue the mission of positively impacting the treatment options for cancer patients," O'Donnell said. "I am humbled to follow on the remarkable legacy of Dr. Mark Ratain who preceded me in this role, and I am grateful to him for his leadership example."

He added, "I am inspired by the opportunity to work alongside many remarkable scientists and look forward to hopefully making many new discoveries and advances.”

O’Donnell is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Section of Hematology/Oncology and was recently named the Chair of the University of Chicago’s Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics. This committee oversees a National Institutes of Health T32-funded training program designed for MD, PhD, and PharmD graduates interested in personalized medicine, pharmacogenomics, new drug development, classical clinical pharmacology, genetics of drug abuse and clinical trial design.

Peter H. O

Peter H. O'Donnell, MD

Peter H. O'Donnell, MD, specializes in the treatment of genitourinary malignancies, including prostate, kidney, and testicular cancers — with particular expertise in bladder cancer. Dr. O'Donnell has an interest in the study of personalized medicine, which involves considering each patient's genetic profile when determining chemotherapy and other therapeutic decisions.

Read Dr. O'Donnell's profile
Wendy Stock, MD

Wendy Stock, MD

Wendy Stock, MD, focuses on treatment for patients with acute and chronic leukemias, myelodysplastic syndromes and myeloproliferative neoplasms, including hematopoietic cell therapies.

Learn more about Dr. Stock