EDRN Steering Committee Call

Wednesday, June 18, 2025 

3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 pm CT/1:30 pm PT 

Present (in BOLD):

• Chair: Arul Chinnaiyan, University of Michigan
• Co-Chair: Karen Anderson, Arizona State University
• NCI: Sudhir Srivastava, Felicia Evans-Long, Sidney Fu, Nick Hodges, Indu Kohaar, Amit Kumar, Guillermo Marquez, Richard Mazurchuk, Altaf Mohammed, Christos Patriotis, Angela Petruzzelli, Neeraj Saxena, Amanda Skarlupka, Wendy Wang, Matt Young
• Arizona State University: Josh LaBaer
• Baylor: Fasiha Kanwal, Erich Sturgis
• Boston University: Marc Lenburg, Jennifer Beane-Ebel, Erin Kane
• Case Western Reserve University: Sanford Markowitz
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Sapna Syngal
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center: Jackie Dahlgren, Ruth Etzioni, Ziding Feng, William Grady, Christopher Li, Royce Malnik, Amanda Paulovich, Lesley Wilkerson, Cecilia Yeung, Yingye Zheng
• George Washington University: Laura Rozek
• Icahn School of Medicine Mt. Sinai: Pei Wang
• JPL: Daniel Crichton, Heather Kincaid
• Johns Hopkins University: Daniel Chan, Ie-Ming Shih, David Sidransky, Victor Velculescu, Hui Zhang, Zhen Zhang
• Massachusetts: Steven Skates, Alan Cha
• Meso Scale: Anu Mathew, Martin Stengelin, Mingyue Wang
• Moffitt: Antonio Amelio, Anna Giuliano, John Heine, Julie Rathwell, Matt Schabath
• NIDCR: Zhong Chen, Amanda Melillo
• NIST: Hua-Jun He
• New York University: Harvey Pass, Leopoldo Segal
• PNNL: Tao Liu
• University of California, Los Angeles: William Hsu, Mike Palazzolo
• University of California, San Diego: Ludmil Alexandrov, Flora Momen Heravi
• University of Colorado: Sachin Wani
• University Health Network: Thomas Kislinger
• University Hospitals/Cleveland Medical Center: Amitabh Chak
• University of Illinois, Chicago: Xiaowei Wang
• University of Maryland: Sanford Stass 
• University of Michigan: Neehar Parikh, Steve Chinn
• University of North Carolina: Nicholas Shaheen
• University of Nebraska: Surinder Batra, Brittney Dickey
• University of Pittsburgh: Randall Brand, James Herman, Robert Schoen, Christine Worthington 
• University of Toledo: James Willey
• University of Texas MD Anderson: Robert Bast, Robert Bresalier, Sam Hanash, Leo Lei, Anirban Maitra, Ed Ostrin, David Wilson
• University of Texas Southwestern: Amit Singal
• University of Washington: William Grady, Andy Hoofnagle, Savannah Partridge
• Washington University: Hua Li
• Vanderbilt: Stephen Deppen, Eric Grogan, Michael Kammer, Jeff Tosoian
• Yale University: Sara Pai, Abhijit Patel

Discussion

Minutes to April 16h Call: Approved as written.

NCI Updates: Guillermo Marquez gave an update:

• EDRN Reference Sets: NCI is reviewing the EDRN specimen reference sets that are at FNLCR.  Collaborative Groups are being asked to review the reference sets for their group and decide what to do with them: keep, discard or return to the study PI. The Division Deputy Director will execute the decisions of the collaborative groups. 
• Awards with Foreign Components: Christos Patriotis said for the RPPRs that are due on July 1st, grants that have foreign collaborators that receive subawards can restructure their grants to replace the foreign institution with a domestic one if it doesn’t impact the impact the integrity of the grant.  If it does, then do not propose a restructuring because the policy regarding this is currently being created to handle foreign subawards.

Upcoming EDRN Meetings

• 2025 Fall Steering Committee: September 17-19 in Seattle, WA (In-person only)
• Select organizing committee—this will be discussed at the next EDRN Executive Committee call.
• Registration page early July
• 2026 Spring Steering Committee meeting: Date and Location TBD. Poll was sent to the Committee Members at https://strawpoll.com/3RnYXdEamye
• Wednesday-Friday, March 4-6, 2026 are the probable dates. 
• Moffitt decided that they cannot host this meeting.  Steve Deppen at Vanderbilt and William Hsu at UCLA offered to host—they will get back to Royce Malnik with their ability to host. Royce Malnik will check with Robert Bresalier about hosting in Houston.

Updates (5-10 min each) 

• Reference Set Working Group: Stephen Deppen reported that the working group received an application to use the prostate reference set, which will be discussed during the July call. 
• Statistical Group Update: Ziding Feng reported that there have not been any meetings in the past couple of months.  
• Early-stage Investigators: Savannah Partridge, who is not formally on this group, reported that the ESI leadership met this week and discussed ideas to revitalize this group.  The plan right now is to recirculate the ESI list to the Steering Committee for their input. 

Next Call: Wednesday, August 20th at 3:30 p.m. Eastern/2:30 p.m. Central/12:30 p.m. Pacific