# Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG)

Source: https://onco.cc/companies/cctg/  
OnCo record `cctg` (Company). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Canada's national academic trials group, which ran the CHALLENGE exercise trial and co-led the SABR-COMET oligometastasis trial.

## Summary

The Canadian Cancer Trials Group, based at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, is Canada's national academic trials group, which ran the CHALLENGE exercise trial and co-led the SABR-COMET oligometastasis trial. CHALLENGE, trial CO.21 published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025, showed that a structured exercise programme after chemotherapy improves outcomes in colon cancer, and its earlier landmarks include MA.17 on extended letrozole and PA.3 on erlotinib in pancreatic cancer, with Wendy Parulekar, Dongsheng Tu and Janet Dancey among the people linked. OnCo connects it to exercise and lifestyle oncology and stereotactic radiotherapy, and to bottlenecks on slow enrolment and the lack of incentive to repurpose cheap interventions. Whether health systems will fund exercise programmes as they fund drugs is the question CHALLENGE now poses. Its programmes are listed in the notes.

## Fields

- Kind: Company
- Last checked: 2026-09-06
- Also known as: Canadian Cancer Trials Group; CCTG; NCIC Clinical Trials Group; NCIC CTG
- Tags: cooperative-group
- HQ: Kingston, ON
- Type: cooperative-group
- Website: https://www.ctg.queensu.ca

## Notes

- CHALLENGE exercise trial
- Breast endocrine therapy trials (MA series)

## Sources

- Official website: https://www.ctg.queensu.ca

## Connected records

- cancers: [Colorectal cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/colorectal/), [HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/breast-hr-positive/)
- technologies: [Exercise & lifestyle oncology](https://onco.cc/technologies/exercise-oncology/), [SBRT / SABR (stereotactic radiotherapy)](https://onco.cc/technologies/sbrt/)
- trials: [NCIC MA.20](https://onco.cc/trials/ma-20/)
- people: [Dongsheng Tu](https://onco.cc/people/tu-dongsheng/), [Janet Dancey](https://onco.cc/people/dancey-janet/), [Wendy Parulekar](https://onco.cc/people/parulekar-wendy/)
- bottlenecks: [No incentive to repurpose cheap drugs](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-generic-repurposing/), [Trials enrol too few, too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/)
- ideas: [A publicly held library of investigational drugs available for academic combination trials](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-public-combination-formulary/)
- key papers: [CHALLENGE: a structured exercise programme after chemotherapy improves survival in colon cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-challenge-exercise-nejm-2025/)
- institutions: [BC Cancer](https://onco.cc/institutions/bc-cancer/), [Canadian Cancer Society](https://onco.cc/institutions/canadian-cancer-society/), [Cancer Care Alberta (Alberta Health Services)](https://onco.cc/institutions/cancer-care-alberta/), [Health Canada](https://onco.cc/institutions/health-canada/), [Juravinski Cancer Centre / Escarpment Cancer Research Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/juravinski/), [Queen's University / Kingston Health Sciences Centre](https://onco.cc/institutions/queens-university-kingston/), [Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Centre](https://onco.cc/institutions/sunnybrook-odette/), [The Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre / Ottawa Hospital Research Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/ottawa-hospital/), [University of Alberta](https://onco.cc/institutions/university-of-alberta/)
- roadmaps: [Diet, exercise and lifestyle roadmap: causes established → interventions that disappointed → exercise proven as treatment](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/nutrition-lifestyle-roadmap/), [Trial modernisation roadmap: the randomised trial → platforms and adaptive designs → decentralised, pragmatic and always-on](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/trial-modernisation-roadmap/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/cctg.json