Speakers Selection

Susana Rives is Head of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Department and Director of the CAR T-cell Unit within the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Service at the Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children’s Hospital, Barcelona, Spain. She was Principal Investigator of the first CAR-T therapy clinical trial in Spain and is currently Principal Investigator of six CAR-T clinical trials, both academic and from the Pharma, in paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). Dr Rives is Co-chair of the Leukemia Group of the Spanish Society of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology and represents Spain in the International BFM Study Group.

Michel Zwaan is registered as a pediatric oncologist in 1999 after training at the VU Medical Center Amsterdam.

He obtained his PhD on ‘Drug Resistance in Pediatric AML’, and defended it cum laude in 2003. In 2005 he moved to Erasmus MC-Sophia Children’s Hospital, Rotterdam, and focused on translational research into myeloid malignancies and early drug development. In 2014 he was appointed as professor in Pediatric Oncology with emphasis on drug development’ and he led the department of Pediatric Oncology/Hematology in Rotterdam from 2014-2018, after which he started working at the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht. There he is appointed as a workgroup leader for Drug Development/Experimental Therapeutics and Medical Chair of the Trial and Data Center.

He is a member of the Executive Board of ITCC (www.itcc-consortium.org) and chairs the Hematology Committee of ITCC. He is an international coordinating Principal Investigator of several studies conducted in the regulatory context of a Pediatric Investigational Plan (intent to file), with Erasmus MC or Princess Máxima acting as international coordinator-sponsor. He chairs the  Ethics Committee of the METC Utrecht (MedNec).

Kjeld Schmiegelow is professor in Pediatrics, University of Copenhagen. Head of Paediatric Oncology, University Hospital Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2002–2006 Secretary General of European Branch of the International Society for Pediatric Oncology. Founder and Chair of the International Ponte di Legno Toxicity Working Group, Chair of the European I-BFM ALL Committee, member of the I-BFM Host Genetic Variation Working Group, and Chair of the Host Genome Common Variant Leukemia/Lymphoma Working Group of the EU COST LEGEND network.

Main research interests include etiology of childhood cancer; leukaemia biology including CNS dissemination; pharmacology of anticancer agents, incl. genetics, kinetics, dynamics, and toxicities associated with these agents; and late somatic and psychosocial effects of childhood cancer & rehabilitation. He was Chair of the Nordic/Baltic ALL 2008 treatment programme (2008-2018) for ALL patients 1-45 years and now member of the Steering Committee of the international ALLTogether consortium (14 European countries).

Kjeld Schmiegelow has published 428 scientific papers, supervised 69 PhD students, and has a H-index of 67.h

Claudia Rossig received her medical degree at the University of Luebeck in Germany, then joined the Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology of University Children´s Hospital Muenster, Germany, as a Clinical Fellow. Between 1998 and 2000, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Malcolm Brenner in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, USA. After finishing her clinical training as a Pediatrician in 2005 and her speciality registration as a Pediatric Hematologist and Oncologist in 2007, she is now director of the Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology in Muenster. Her experimental research focuses on the development of cellular immune-therapeutic strategies to treat pediatric malignancies, including both leukemias and solid tumors.

Oskar A. Haas is professor of laboratory medicine, tumor biology and human genetics. He is the head of the laboratory in the St. Anna Children’s Hospital and acts as medical director of a private laboratory in Vienna. Until his retirement, he was also a group leader in the Children’s Cancer Research Institute and vice medical director of the Labdia GmbH. His wide-spread interests focus primarily on the formation, function, and consequences of genetic changes in childhood leukemias. A list of his publications can be found at Researchgate.net.

I am a full time clinician in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and have been delivering care across the full range of paediatric oncology diagnoses since 2004. I am involved in the national and international development and delivery of clinical trials in childhood Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL). I led the UK National Cancer  Research Institute paediatric NHL group (2010-2018) and remain an active member. I am an active member of the European Inter-Group for Childhood Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (EICNHL) and  I am currently the Lead Investigator for a global platform study (Glo-BNHL, EudraCT 2021-004283-10, ITCC100) in paediatric and adolescent relapsed and refractory mature B-NHL investigating the efficacy of Bispecific Antibodies, Antibody drug conjugates combined with chemo-immunotherapy and CAR T-cells. 

More broadly, I led the delivery of all cancer trials for children and young people in England for 10 years (2011-2021) conducted through the National Institute for Health Research Cancer (NCRN) and Clinical (NIHR CRN) Research Networks.