The University of Colorado Cancer Center is pleased to announce that Marie Wood, MD, has been named the medical director of the Cancer Clinical Trials Office (CCTO).
Returning to Colorado is a homecoming for Wood, who completed her medical school and fellowship training at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and stayed on as faculty for five years.
She then joined the University of Vermont and University of Vermont Cancer Center before returning to Colorado. She brings more than 30 years of clinical and research expertise to her role.
Wood also will serve as the clinical director for breast medical oncology, and she will be seeing patients at both Anschutz Medical Campus and Highlands Ranch Hospital. She currently serves as the co-chair of the prevention committee for the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, in addition to serving as the deputy director for cancer prevention and control within Alliance.
In her new role with CCTO, Wood says she looks forward to meeting and collaborating with colleagues “to see if we can increase accrual to trials that we have and make sure we have the right trials open,” she says. “Another goal is to see if we can increase diversity among our accruals, which can be a challenging thing to do.
“I know the CU Cancer Center has been really focused on this and made some great inroads, so we’re going to work to ensure those are sustainable. Considering things like distance, cost, and time are going to be important as we’re trying to increase accrual among underrepresented groups, especially those living in rural areas.”
Highlighting cancer prevention
Wood’s research has focused on cancer prevention, including research studying compounds such a vitamin D, metformin and statins on breast cancer biomarkers. She says she looks forward to collaborating with partners and stakeholders throughout the CU Cancer Center to support prevention research.
She says she also is eager to support researchers in working to help reduce activation times for clinical trials.
“Ultimately, my goal is to make sure that CCTO is a flagship for the CU Cancer Center,” she says.
CU Cancer Center leadership also expresses sincere gratitude to Anthony Elias, MD, who served as the interim medical director of the CCTO for the past 18 months. During that time, Elias helped guide the CCTO through the pandemic as well as the recent National Cancer Institute site review.
