The EEC brings together researchers and medical professionals from Europe and beyond, and fosters collaboration through working groups in areas of biology, new therapeutics and local therapy.
Collaboration is vital in a rare cancer like ES and the EEC facilitates the sharing of knowledge, expertise and resources. Harmonisation of therapies and procedures is important so that all patients receive the best care and so the EEC Executive invited members of the ES community to set up local therapy working groups to address this.
Ewing sarcoma biology
Biological research into Ewing sarcoma is important to the EEC and the biology research community is represented on the EEC Executive Committee by:
- Prof. Didier Surdez, Switzerland
- Prof. Thomas Grünewald, Germany
- Dr Eleni Tomazou, Austria
A biology working group has been established and will meet for the first time in 2024. The group is led by these representatives.
New EWing Therapeutics Strategy Group (NEWTS Group)
The EURO EWING Consortium New EWing Therapeutics Strategy Group (EEC NEWTS Group) aims to increase the access of patients with Ewing sarcoma to relevant early phase clinical trials and to promote drug development.
- Chair - Professor Martin McCabe, The University of Manchester.
- Deputy Chair - Dr Pablo Berlanga, Institut Gustave Roussy.
Local Therapy Groups
In 2021, the EEC Surgery Working Group and the EEC Radiation Oncology Working group were established with members representing many European countries and co-operative groups.
The two working groups will liaise with to ensure that their activities are complementary.
EEC Radiation Oncology Working Group
The EEC Radiation Oncology Working Group is chaired by Beate Timmermann with Line Claude as deputy chair. Membership was drawn from across Europe bringing together a group of radiation oncologists as well as clinical and medical oncologists.
EEC Surgery Working Group
The EEC Surgery Group is chaired by Dimosthenis Andreou and Michael Parry. The group met for the first time in September 2021 and have agreed Terms of Reference.
A first priority was to create alignment between collection of surgical data for two international trials for ES that are currently in development: iEuroEwing and InterEwing 1.
The group agreed on four further projects and these are in progress:
- Development of surgical guidelines for ES
Surgical guidelines for the INTER-Ewing1 and iEuroEwing trials, identify need for future research.
Leads: Dimo Andreou, Pietro Pellegrino, Olga Zaikova
- Development of a questionnaire regarding SOPs for the surgical treatment of ES in different centres across Europe
Paper describing the current strategies (diagnosis and treatment) in ES
Lead: Jendrik Hardes
- Optimize the soft tissue margins in bone ES
- Review of data in current literature.
- Propose recommendations for soft tissue resection margins.
- Prospective survey with regard to the radiological pré-chemo / preop aspects.
Lead: Thomas Schubert
- Impact of pulmonary metastasectomy in ES
Evaluation of the prognostic impact of pulmonary metastasectomy y (± CTX, RTX) compared to no metastasectomy.
Lead: Andreas Leithner
Surgery Working Group Members
- Surgeons
- Dimo Andreou (Chair)
- Michael Parry (Deputy Chair)
- Harriet Branford White (UK)
- Sylvain Briand (France)
- Krzysztof Bronowicki (Poland)
- Philipp Funovics (Austria)
- Ștefan Gavriliu (Romania)
- Craig Gerrand (UK)
- Francois Gouin (France)
- Isidro Gracia (Spain)
- Jendrik Hardes (Germany)
- Asle Hesla (Sweden)
- Vasileios Kontogeorgakos (Greece)
- Minna Laitinen (Finland)
- Andreas Leithner (Austria)
- Iwona Malesza (Poland)
- Eric Mascard (France)
- Michael Mørk Petersen (Denmark)
- Pietro Pellegrino (Italy)
- Thomas Schubert (Belgium)
- Ecaterina-Maria Sora (Romania)
- Michiel van de Sande (Netherlands)
- Lizz van der Heijden (Netherlands)
- Olga Zaikova (Norway)
- Oleg Vyrva (Ukraine)
- Paediatric oncologists
- Lianne Haveman (Netherlands)
- Perrine Marec-Berard (France)
- Medical oncologist
- Manuel Magalhães (Portugal)
- Patient advocates
- Matthew Short (UK)
- KV (UK)