Trustees Week 2023
This Trustees Week, we shine the spotlight on Dr Kate Wheeler and Dr Deb Tweddle, our Medical Trustees for over 10 years.
Kate has been the UK representative on the European Neuroblastoma SIOPEN Executive group (2013 to 2016), a member of the writing committee and Co Principal Investigator of the SIOPEN Low and Intermediate Risk Neuroblastoma Trial, the UK lead paediatric oncologist for the SIOPEN Opsoclonus Myoclonus Stud. Deb is also a member of SIOPEN (European neuroblastoma group) and the SIOPEN Biology Group.
SIOPEN Annual General Meeting 2023
“It was a vibrant meeting full of interesting updates on clinical trials and new study proposals ”
Dr Kate Wheeler and Dr Deb Tweddle at the SIOPEN AGM
Deb and Kate attended the SIOPEN (international Society of Paediatric Oncology - European Neuroblastoma Group) annual general meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 4th to 6th October 2023. Their visit was supported by Eusa Pharma.
This year’s meeting marked the 25th anniversary of SIOPEN and was attended by over 250 delegates from the 34 SIOPEN countries – the largest ever for a SIOPEN meeting.
It was a vibrant meeting full of interesting updates on clinical trials and new study proposals including an annual tour–de-force of the neuroblastoma activities of the US Children’s Oncology Group presented by Dr Ro Bagatelle. It was the final meeting for Dr Maja Beck-Popovic (Lausanne, Switzerland) as President of SIOPEN before she handed over the reins to Dr Lucas Moreno (Barcelona, Spain). She was congratulated for all her achievements including extensive revisions of the regulatory and governance procedures of SIOPEN.
Highlights of the meeting included:
a presentation by Dr Pablo Berlanga (Paris) describing real world experience of chemo-immunotherapy (anti-GD2 immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy)
an update by Dr Francesca Del Bufalo of her recently published study in the New England Journal of Medicine reporting promising results with 3rd generation Chimeric Antigen Receptor T (CAR-T) cell immunotherapy for relapsed and refractory neuroblastoma.
Both Deb and Kate were actively involved in the working group discussions about the future management of non High Risk Neuroblastoma patients. In the presentation given by Dr Dominique Valteau (Paris) it was pleasing to see that the UK are the 2nd highest recruiter to the ongoing European High Risk Neuroblastoma trial (HRNBL-2), a trial jointly funded by Neuroblastoma UK and Solving Kids Cancer.
It was a very successful and collaborative meeting and was a fitting tribute to mark 25 years of SIOPEN activities. Thank you Deb and Kate for your involvement with this important group.