About us

The EORTC Soft Tissue and Bone Sarcoma Group (STBSG)

Historic background: The EORTC STBSG was founded in 1976. The founding members came from Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, UK and the Netherlands.
Organization: The objectives were to develop, stimulate and co-ordinate studies on all aspects of the treatment of soft tissue sarcomas (STS) as well as to organise congresses, symposia and conferences to promote these studies. The Group has developed very strict quality control procedures and played a major role in the development of the RECIST criteria. The quality assurance program involves a strict membership policy, central review of responses, central review of pathology, use of a systemic therapy checklist and on site monitoring visit. Today the STBSG has members from 56 institutions from 14 countries.

Types of studies: The activities have primarily been within the areas of standards for local and systemic treatment strategies especially in advanced STS. So far, more than 45 clinical trials have been conducted and more than 200 pts per year have been included. A unique database with over 2500 patients has been developed and based on this a number of important studies have been published on prognostic factors, long term survivors and new response criteria. Several new drugs have been tested in STS but still doxorubicin and ifosfamide are the most effective. Other drugs with some first line activity are dacarbazine, caelyx and possibly ET743. Imatinib is very effective in GIST where it is now the treatment of choice - a development for which the group has played a very important role. Also several phase 3 trials have been performed on both single agent and combination chemotherapy. The group has also participated in osteosarcoma intergroup study. Recently a phase 3 study on adjuvant doxorubicin and ifosfamide in STS has been closed and awaits further analysis. Presently the group is performing studies on caelyx + ifosfamide, high dose ifosfamide + doxorubicin, hyperthermia, exatecan, brostallicin, and iressa. The group also participates in the EE99 study of Ewing/PNET. Finally studies on tranlational research have been initiated.

Intergroup co-operations: An increasing number of studies have recently been performed in collaboration with other groups such as SWOG, ECOG, NCIC, AGITG, FSG, ISG and SSG.