LETTER FROM THE PI
Dear reader,
First of all, thank you very much for being here, reading this. Your support- either as a funder, collaborator, colleague, friend, trainee, mentor, subscriber, patient, member of public, regulator, media person, or any other follower of BG Lab and Cancer Groundshot philosophy- means a lot. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to read this first-ever cancer groundshot annual report from the BG Lab.
This report summarizes the activities of BG Lab over 2025 calendar year. We gave somewhat of a formal structure to the BG Lab this summer. Now we have a dedicated website and X account, and you can subscribe to both to get regular updates from us. While the report gives you an overview of our accomplishments and growth over 2025, let me highlight some notable achievements from 2025, some challenges we need to overcome, and some exciting plans for 2026!
Let’s start on a positive note highlighting our accomplishments for 2025. We had a remarkable year, indeed. We had the highest number of publications for any calendar year so far with 27 peer-reviewed publications, highest number of citations for any calendar year with over 1800 citations, and received five international awards in one year! The awards included Fellow of ASCO, 40 under 40 in cancer care, Oncodaily Yvonne Award – Challenging the Status Quo category, and the recognition of #1 Highly Ranked Scholar in Global Oncology. The William E. Rawls prize from Canadian Cancer Society is especially meaningful because it is my first national recognition in Canada since I moved to Queen’s in 2019.
The core philosophy of BG Lab is Cancer Groundshot, which highlights the need for prioritization in cancer care and research- both nationally and internationally. We are grounded on the principles of patient centered research, global equity in cancer care, and mentorship. These three principles underpin everything we do.
Policy Impact
We have had important policy impact in 2025. Our work has been cited in The 2024 Declaration of Helsinki, as well as policy papers from WHO, ASCO, and ESMO. I was also the only representative from Canada or Nepal to participate as an expert at the 2025 WHO Essential Medicines List Expert Committee Meeting, lending my voice to the EML decisions. I also continued to contribute to ASCO policy through the International Affairs Committee and ESMO policy through MCBS working group and ESMO public policy committee.
Education/Mentorship
In summer, we welcomed Dr. Laure-Anne Teuwen, a medical oncologist from Belgium, as our first international visiting fellow. She spent six weeks at the BG Lab, publishing three papers, doing one presentation, and successfully applying to one grant during that period. She subsequently joined BG Lab as the co-investigator and has been involved with several projects related to global oncology and cancer policy. She has now been selected for the ESMO Leadership Generation Programme.
I am proud of the fact that a trainee has been the first author in 9 of the 16 papers led by BG lab this year. 2 of our trainees have also received awards for their presentation at research meetings this year. We also funded one trainee from Nepal for his travel to ESMO Annual Meeting this year where he made a mini oral presentation.
In addition, I was involved in educational activities all over the world speaking at conferences. But to highlight a couple, teaching at the ASCO-AIOM research course in Rome was a special pleasure as it was an opportunity to shape the minds of 120 young oncology professionals from Italy, Europe, and beyond. I also chaired an educational session on pancreas cancer treatment at ASCO 2025, which was very well received with excellent feedback from patient community. And at the end of the year, I was a faculty/mentor at the first Vail-style 5-day research method workshop for Latin America called On-Collab at Sao Paolo, Brazil. We also held the first BG Lab webinar in December.
We are proud and delighted to announce that BG Lab is accepting both in-person and virtual fellows starting 2026. Please check our new fellowship page for details.
Global Oncology
In the global oncology front, we published several important papers this year, but special highlight to the paper where we report results from a qualitative study of Indian oncologists on what factors they consider making treatment decisions, and another paper from Nepal studying the affordability, availability, and price variations in the price of same cancer drug based on which pharmacy they go to. Also, we did a comprehensive study of how financial toxicity is being defined in LMICs across the world.
Major Publications
We were able to publish in major journals such as Lancet Oncology, JCO, Annals of Oncology, JNCI, JAMA Oncology, and BMJ Oncology in 2025. Some papers that I’d like to particularly highlight are below. I want to highlight these papers because these papers have huge policy impact.
- De-escalation trials can be designed as superiority rather than non-inferiority. Probably my most impactful paper of 2025, because this can change the way we test for de-escalated therapies. I am already receiving emails from major trial groups around the world informing me that some of them have redesigned some of their new trials in accordance with this philosophy.
- The Common Sense Oncology principles for designing and reporting RCTs of cancer drugs. If this checklist is implemented, better patient-centric trials will be designed. If this checklist is employed by journals, publications of RCTs of cancer drugs will not suffer from the biases.
- Cost of Convenience in Cancer Care. This paper offers opportunities for health systems for immediate cost savings without compromising outcomes, as well as, broaches the discussion surrounding how much price we should pay as a society for innovations that only involve convenience. Colleagues in Spain have outlined a nice algorithm for payers based on this paper.
- Financial toxicity and its relationship with patient outcomes among participants of clinical trials in Canada. This paper shows that financial toxicity is present and can continue to worsen among trial participants, and this can be associated with detrimental patient outcomes. This urges a need for policy level action to protect trial participants from financial toxicity.
In addition to these publications, I also joined the Journal of National Cancer Institute (JNCI) as an associate editor in 2025.
Thank You to our Current Funders
We have been fortunate enough to be funded by Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, which provides salary support to me allowing me the time to pursue all these research projects. Early on this year, we also received operating grants from Marathon of Hope Cancer Center Network Patient Voices in Research Initiative, which allowed us to grow from 1 to 5!
Stay Tuned for Future Updates
As we look forward to 2026, BG Lab aims to pursue some larger-scale projects in value-based cancer care and clinical trial methods (also contingent on funding). We are also looking forward to establishing a more structured mentorship programs for trainees both in Canada and across the globe. We are also planning an initiative to share important and inspirational voices in cancer research – an initiative we are planning to pursue through an upcoming BG Lab podcast channel. We will continue our monthly newsletters, and will post more opportunities for collaboration, fellowships, and mentorship, so stay tuned.
How Can You Support Us?
As you read our success stories above, please remember that BG Lab consists of only 5 people at the moment, including myself. We have lots of exciting plans for the future. We have important ideas that we want to work on, that will provide important results for the practice of oncology. We can do so much more! But we are limited by funding. The type of work that we do are not recognized often for funding by traditional funding sources, and get overlooked by basic science research or finding a new target or clinical trials or lately, artificial intelligence. BG Lab doesn’t chase the sexiest new thing, but remains committed to conducting high quality research aligned with the philosophy of cancer Groundshot and in accordance with the principles of patient centered research, global equity in cancer care, and mentorship.
If you are a funding agency and believe in the value of the work that we do, you can support us by:
- Providing unrestricted operating grants
- Providing project specific research grants
- Supporting fellowships
I am incredibly proud of the hard work each member of our team has put into making this year a success. This was a team effort from everyone involved. We thank you all for the continued support.
Thank you,
Bishal Gyawali, MD, PhD, FASCO
Associate Professor, Oncology
Faculty Scientist, Sinclair Cancer Research Institute
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Clinician-Scientist II
10 Stuart Street, Level 2
Queen’s University, Kingston, ON
Canada K7L 3N6
Email: Gyawali.bishal@queensu.ca
Tel: 613-533-6000 ext 78509
www.oncologybg.com
Dr. Bishal Gyawali 