Gennady Bratslavsky, MD, professor and chair of Department of Urology, has been elected as president of the Society of Urological Oncology Clinical Trials Consortium (SUO-CTC).

“Such recognition is a reflection a great success of our Urology Department and our university,” said Julio Licinio, MD, PhD, executive dean of the College of Medicine. “This is also an enormous boost for our multidisciplinary genitourinary program and Upstate Cancer Center.”

Created, owned and operated by its members, the SUO-CTC is a clinical research investigator network of more than 180 clinical sites in the U.S. and Canada. This national alliance of leading academic and community based uro-oncologists is committed to furthering urology research.

SUO-CTC pursues clinical trials, in concert with sponsors, to investigate therapeutic interventions which address urological cancers including, but not restricted to prostate, bladder, or kidney cancers. Together with industry, the SUO-CTC offers enhanced research options for ultimately delivering better quality of life to our patients.

Identifying relevant targets and managing clinical trials is increasingly complex. In the past, medical oncologists investigated a steady stream of drugs from the NCI for the conduct of phase II trials based primarily on endpoints defined by radiographic response. Today, clinical trials usually involve a multi-disciplinary approach and partnerships with industrial sponsors. They almost always include serum banking and tissue collection for the evaluation of biologically based surrogate endpoints; patients are now treated with significantly lower disease burden which requires much longer follow-up for clinical outcome and “hard” endpoints such as survival. Modern clinical trials are logistically complex, data rich, and exist in an increasingly difficult regulatory milieu.

The SUO Clinical Trials Consortium (SUO-CTC) fills the need for dedicated expertise and clinical input into the design of urology focused clinical trials and patient recruitment. Additionally, the SUO-CTC takes primary responsibility for delivery (i.e., reporting from supporting information systems) of clinical and translational research data to the Society of Urologic Oncology and the academic community at large.

SUO-CTC president’s post is a two- year term, which is renewable once for a total of four years.