Greg Yothers

Contributions to Public Health

• Treatment of stage II and III colon cancer: My largest contributions to science have been related to the treatment of colon cancer. Since 2006, I have led the program of research in this area from the statistics side for the NSABP and subsequently NRG Oncology.
  • Taieb, J., Basile, D., Seligmann, J., Argiles, G., André, T., Gallois, C., Goldberg, R. M., Yothers, G., Sobrero, A., Meyerhardt, J. A., Souglakos, J., Labianca, R., Iveson, T., Church, D. N., Arnold, D., Tie, J., Gill, S., Laurent-Puig, P., Yoshino, T., Lonardi, S., Shi, Q. Standardizing data collection in adjuvant colon cancer trials: A consensus project from the IDEA and ACCENT international consortia and national experts. European journal of cancer, May 2024, 206:114118. DOI: 10.1016/j.ejca.2024.114118
  • Yothers, G., Venook, A. P., Oki, E., Niedzwiecki, D., Lin, Y., Crager, M. R., Chao, C., Baehner, F. L., Wolmark, N., & Yoshino, T. (2022). Patient-specific meta-analysis of 12-gene colon cancer recurrence score validation studies for recurrence risk assessment after surgery with or without 5FU and oxaliplatin. Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology, Feb 2022. 13(1), 126–136. DOI: 10.21037/jgo-21-620
• Treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer: The NSABP has a long history of research in rectal cancer. My direct involvement began with the publication of our protocol R-03. NSABP R-04 was a 2x2 factorial trial design that demonstrated that capecitabine is equivalent to 5-FU and also showed that oxaliplatin did not improve outcomes when added to either 5-FU or capecitabine.
  • Allegra CJ, Yothers G, O’Connell MJ, Beart RW, Wozniak TF, Pitot HC, Shields AF, Landry JC, Ryan DP, Arora A, Evans LS, Bahary N, Soori G, Eakle JF, Robertson JM, Moore DF Jr, Mullane MR, Marchello BT, Ward PJ, Sharif S, Roh MS, Wolmark N. Neoadjuvant 5-FU or Capecitabine Plus Radiation With or Without Oxaliplatin in Rectal Cancer Patients: A Phase III Randomized Clinical Trial. Journal of The National Cancer Institute. 2015 Nov; 107 (11):1-8. PMID: 26374429. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djv248.
  • George TJ Jr, Allegra CJ, Yothers G. Neoadjuvant Rectal (NAR) Score: a New Surrogate Endpoint in Rectal Cancer Clinical Trials. Current Colorectal Cancer Reports. 2015 Aug 9; 11 (5):275-280. PMCID: PMC4550644. PMID: 26321890. doi: 10.1007/s11888-015-0285-2.
• Treatment for breast cancer: One of my earliest scientific accomplishments was to contribute to the landmark publication of the joint analysis of NSABP B-31 and NCCTG N9831 which established that trastuzumab was effective for the treatment of HER2 positive operable breast cancer.  I have been involved with several other practice changing breast cancer studies culminating with the recent publication of the Olympia Study manuscript which demonstrated that Olaparib can improve outcomes for BRCA mutated breast cancers.
  • Tutt, A. N. J., Garber, J. E., Kaufman, B., Viale, G., Fumagalli, D., Rastogi, P., Gelber, R. D., de Azambuja, E., Fielding, A., Balmaña, J., Domchek, S. M., Gelmon, K. A., Hollingsworth, S. J., Korde, L. A., Linderholm, B., Bandos, H., Senkus, E., Suga, J. M., Shao, Z., Pippas, A. W., Nowecki, Z., Huzarski, T., Ganz, P. A., Lucas, P. C., Baker, N., Loibl, S., McConnell, R., Piccart, M., Schmutzler, R., Steger, G. G., Costantino, J. P., Arahmani, A., Wolmark, N., McFadden, E., Karantza, V., Lakhani, S. R., Yothers, G., Campbell, C., Geyer, C. E. Jr; OlympiA Clinical Trial Steering Committee and Investigators, Adjuvant Olaparib for Patients with BRCA1- or BRCA2-Mutated Breast Cancer. N Engl J Med, Jun 3, 2021. EPub ahead of print https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2105215  
  • Romond EH, Perez EA, Bryant J, Suman VJ, Geyer CE Jr, Davidson NE, Tan-Chiu E, Martino S, Paik S, Kaufman PA, Swain SM, Pisansky TM, Fehrenbacher L, Kutteh LA, Vogel VG, Visscher DW, Yothers G, Jenkins RB, Brown AM, Dakhil SR, Mamounas EP, Lingle WL, Klein PM, Ingle JN, Wolmark N. Trastuzumab plus adjuvant chemotherapy for operable HER2-positive breast cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2005 Oct 20; 353 (16):1673-84. PMID: 16236738. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa052122.
• Methods to identify subsets of a population with treatment benefit: As a graduate student my dissertation focused on several topics that were connected by the common theme of determining subsets of a population where a treatment may be effective, especially when the treatment is not effective overall.  In my subsequent applied clinical trials work I have continued to pursue this research interest focusing on subsets determined by race, gender, biomarkers, or other factors.
  • Yothers G, Sargent DJ, Wolmark N, Goldberg RM, O’Connell MJ, Benedetti JK, Saltz LB, Dignam JJ, Blackstock AW, ACCENT Collaborative Group. Outcomes among black patients with stage II and III colon cancer receiving chemotherapy: an analysis of ACCENT adjuvant trials. Journal of the National Cancer Institute. 2011 Oct 19; 103 (20):1498-506. PMCID: PMC3196480. PMID: 21997132. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djr310.
  • Yothers G, Sampson AR. Simultaneous Confidence Band for the Difference of Segmented Linear Models. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference. 2011 Feb; 141 (2):1059-1068. PMCID: PMC4498589. PMID: 26166937. doi: 10.1016/j.jspi.2010.09.011.