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The Euro Ewing Consortium (EEC) Executive Committee was established in March 2020 and acts on behalf of its members to deliver on EEC aims and objectives. Meet our representatives.
Chair: Professor Sandra Strauss
Sandra Strauss is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist. Her clinical post is based at University College London Hospital, part of the London Sarcoma Service, one of the largest sarcoma services in Europe. She specialises in the systemic treatment of bone and soft tissue sarcomas in both adults and teenagers.
Deputy Chair: Professor Hans Merks
I work as a pediatric oncologist in the Solid Tumors Department at Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology and coordinate the care of children with bone and soft tissue sarcomas there. I am chairman of the SKION Protocol Committee Rhabdomyosarcomas, and chairman of the SKION Disease Committee Bottumoren. The Máxima Sarcoma group work closely with the research groups in the laboratory and with international sarcoma experts worldwide. In addition, I am the chair of the SKION Taskforce Pediatric Oncogenetics, which deals with children with a predisposition to malignancies. I am also chair of the European Soft Tissue Sarcoma Study Group.
Mr Andrew Westwood (Patient Advocate)
Andrew's daughter Imogen was successfully treated for Ewing sarcoma in 2014/15. He joined EEC as a patient advocate in 2017 and sits on the rEECur Trial Management Group, NEWTS therapeutic group and the Executive Committee. Andrew is also an active member of PORT (Paediatric Oncology Reference Team) and a trustee of aPODD Foundation. He recently retired as Finance Director of Bone Cancer Research Trust.
Sophie Hartley (Patient Advocate)
I was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma in my right distal femur on 21 April 2005, age 8. I received Euro-Ewings99 treatment protocol and a full knee replacement. I later had leg lengthening surgeries to correct the discrepancy as I grew through puberty, including an illazrov frame. Now, I work for the leading children and young people's cancer charity in the UK in the fundraising team and share my story to help the next generation of childhood cancer patients.
Professor Uta Dirksen
Professor Uta Dirksen is Vice chair of Pediatrics III, Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, Immunology, Cardiology and Pulmonology, founder of the AYA unit and vice director of the West German Cancer Center, University Hospital Essen, German Cancer Research Center (DKTK) and National Center for Tumordiseases (NCT) and full professor at the University Duisburg-Essen. She is voce Chair of the Society for Pediatric Oncology and Hematology (GPOH) and President elect of the International Society for Pediatric Oncology, Europe (SIOPE). She trained at University Hospital Duesseldorf and Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf, where her research focused on immune-oncology with PhD theses on pulmonary alveolar proteinosis in AML. She continued her education at the University Hospital Muenster, Westfalian Wilhelms University Muenster, where she began her sarcoma research. She is head of the collaborative Ewing Sarcoma Study Group of the GPOH and conducts first and second line clinical trials. Her laboratory is completely focused on pediatric sarcoma with a strong focus on Ewing sarcoma. To foster translational research, she has built a large network of excellence within the CESS group. Professor Dirksen has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers, reviews and book chapters.
Professor Thomas Grünewald
Thomas Grünewald from the Hopp Children's Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ) and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) has been awarded the "Consolidator Grant" by the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC is one of the highest awards for scientists. The "Consolidator Grant" gives research group leaders the opportunity to deepen their research focus and expand their team. Thomas Grünewald wants to use it to research a new gene therapy for children with bone and soft tissue cancer and bring it into clinical development.
Dr Nathalie Gaspar
Dr Nathalie GASPAR, MD, Ph, is a paediatric oncologist at Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus (Villejuif, France), head of the adolescent and young adult (AYA) unit and chair of the AYA programme of the institute (SPIAJA programme), since 2009. She is in charge of bone sarcomas, cancers with peak incidence in the AYA population, from biology to clinical care. Dr Gaspar is also paediatric head of the French bone adult and paediatric sarcoma group, GROUPOS. She is actively involved in early new drug development in France and in Europe, through her participation to the clinical trial committee of the Innovative Therapeutics for Child and adolescent with Cancer (ITCC) consortium and through her action as co-chair of the Fostering Age Inclusive Research (FAIR) trial initiative of the multistakeholder ACCELERATE platform.
Dr Roberto Luksch
Degree in Medicine and Surgery in 1987, specialization in Hematology in 1991 and in Oncology in 1999. He worked at the Hematology Center of the Polyclinic Hospital of Milan until October 1989. Since 1989 he has worked at the Complex Pediatrics Structure of this Foundation where he has a highly specialized professional management role for the coordination of high-dose therapies and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation activities in pediatric solid tumors. He is responsible for clinical protocols regarding bone sarcomas and neuroblastoma, with roles of coordination of national and international study protocols within the Italian Sarcoma Group (ISG), the Italian Association of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology (AIEOP) and the Society International Pediatric Oncology (SIOP). He is the author or co-author of over 100 papers published in international peer-view journals and numerous book chapters on the topic of pediatric oncology.
Professor Anna Raciborska
Dr. Raciborska has developed a long-term research collaboration withwith Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo of Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, the world’s leading specialist on Ewing Sarcoma and is, herself, now one of Poland’s leading experts in the treatment of the disease, the second most common pediatric malignant bone tumor. Below are the results of some of their recent research.
Mr Michael van de Sande (MD)
Michiel van de Sande is professor of orthopedic oncology, in particular pediatric orthopedic oncology, at the orthopedics department at the LUMC and works as an oncological pediatric orthopedic surgeon at the Princess Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology. He is Chairman of the Bone Tumors and Infection Working Group of the EPOS and a board member of the Dutch Sarcoma Group, FOSTER and EuroEwing and the EMSOS. His surgical specialty focuses on the treatment of pediatric, AYA and adult patients with bone and soft tissue sarcomas. Within the LUMC Cancer research line, research within oncological orthopedics focuses on (inter)national collaboration; such as multicenter studies on giant cell tumors of the joint and bone, soft tissue sarcomas, chondrosarcomas, adamantinoma, osteo- and Ewing sarcomas.
Professor Didier Surdez
Head of tumour research
Dr Eleni Tomazou
Eleni Tomazou has been a PI at the St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute (CCRI, Vienna, Austria) since January 2018. She has established a research program focusing on epigenome-based precision medicine at CCRI. She has a strong background in epigenomics research and two years’ experience in clinical diagnostics and management of a high-throughput diagnostics lab. Prior to joining CCRI, she did her PhD at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK) and postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute and the Harvard Department for Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (Cambridge, USA). She is a 2023 ERC consolidator grantee and a 2016 recipient of the Elise Richter Fellowship, a prestigious career development grant for female scientists offered by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF).
Dr Javier Martin-Broto
Sarcoma Medical Oncologist at the University Hospital Fundacion Jimenez Diaz (Madrid, Spain). I founded and currently lead the Research Group ATBsarc devoted to Sarcoma Research at CITIUS III (Seville, Spain). I studied Medicine between 1982 and 1988, obtaining the official title of Specialist in Medical Oncology in 1994 after successfully passing a national exam. I obtained PhD degree on Molecular Biology in 2010. From 1994 to current I devoted to sarcoma care in different Hospitals (Hospital Son Dureta/Son Espases & Hospiral Universitario Virgen del Rocío). Those Hospital became part of Center of Reference for Sarcoma. Likewise, HUVR is one accredited within ERN (European Network for Rare Diseases) as European Center of Reference in Sarcoma from 2017. I have fought for the activation of the accreditation process in sarcoma centers, systems and reference units (CSUR) of the National Health Service in Spain. During my stay at the HU Virgen del Rocio I worked actively to achieve accreditation for this center.
Since the beginning of my career, my activity has combined clinical care and research (clinical, translational and preclinical) with teaching activities. My preclinical and translational activity has served as a rationale to develop a large number of international academic clinical trials as principal investigator -I've been the PI of the Research Group TERABIS at the Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla (IBIS) since 2014 to 2021-. Additionally, I have participated as an investigator in more than 60 clinical trials in sarcomas. All this activity is reflected in more than 134 scientific articles and in my participation in numerous national and international congresses and meetings (an average of more than 50 per year).
Additionally, I am a Founder Member of the Spanish Group for Research on Sarcomas (GEIS) and currently vice-chairman of this group from 2019 (Chairman from 2010 to 2018). Member of ASCO, ESMO (where I am chair of sarcoma track and ESMO Faculty member in Sarcomas from 2010 ), CTOS (member of board directors of CTOS from 2014 to 2018), SEOM and member of Steering committee of EURACAN network.
Currently I combine clinical sarcoma assistance with translational research, leading a basic research team in the lab. Additionally, I am running and designing several trials on sarcoma patients, some of them as coordinator at national and international level. I am leading the consortium SELNET through Horizon 2020 grant; this network involves Latin-American and European countries. My career has always been committed to excellence in healthcare, research and academia.