Korean Cancer Study Group

Founded in 1998 by Korean medical oncologists, KCSG is the country's academic cooperative group and a founding member of the Asian Clinical Trials Network. It runs disease-specific committees (gastrointestinal, thoracic, breast, hepatobiliary, genitourinary, lymphoma, head and neck) and a data centre, and it is the route by which Korea's high-volume hospitals run multicentre investigator-initiated trials and correlative biomarker studies. Korean investigators enrol a large share of global gastric and EGFR-mutant lung cancer trials, and KCSG trials of second-line gastric chemotherapy and of precision oncology umbrella designs (K-MASTER) have been influential. Members include Seoul National University Hospital, Asan Medical Center, Samsung Medical Center and Severance.