Newswise — University of Chicago Medicine oncologist Wendy Stock, MD, has been named co-chair of the Leukemia Committee of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology. She was selected after an international search by the Alliance, which is a clinical trials network sponsored by the National Cancer Institute that promotes collaboration between approximately 10,000 cancer specialists across the U.S. and Canada.

Stock and fellow co-chair Geoffrey Uy, MD, of Siteman Cancer Center, 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.