Panellists
Associate Professor (Nuclear Medicine); MD; PhD; Specialist in Nuclear Medicine and Respiratory Medicine.
Currently: member of the ENETS advisory board; Center coordinator of the NET Bologna multidisciplinary team-ENETS center of Excellence; Member of the ESMO Faculty staff- Neuroendocrine and Neuroendocrine, Endocrine Neoplasms and CUP; Member of the scientific committee of ITANET; Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Reviewer for JNM, EJNMMI.
Author (since 2003) of 114 scientific articles published on peer-reviewed international or national journals (Scopus H-index =35, Total Citations=3839).
Academic activity at the University of Bologna (Single cycle degree programme in Medicine and Surgery; First cycle degree programme in Imaging and Radiotherapy techniques; Single cycle degree/Combined Bachelor and Master: Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Radioprotection (Language: English); Medical Specialties schools: Nuclear Medicine, Radiology, Radiotherapy).
Dr Eric Baudin is head of the the Endocrine Oncology Unit, Institut Gustave Roussy Unit, Villejuif, France. His research areas include the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients with endocrine tumours. Doctor Baudin has served on the Advisory Board to ENETS, ENSAT and ESMO. He has published widely on the management of endocrine tumours. He is head of the coordination of French endocrine tumor network (2019-onward) and is currently president of the French Group of Endocrine tumors (2017-2019).
I am a nuclear medicine physician who has expertise in therapeutic and diagnostic applications in oncology. My past clinical and research experience includes combining the therapeutic and diagnostic components of nuclear medicine, which is referred to as theranostics. My expertise is in the development of peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) of gut and lung neuroendocrine tumors, including special investigational and molecular translational analyses to facilitate their diagnosis and therapy. In addition, I have experience with radioiodine therapy of differentiated thyroid cancer and hyperthyroidism. I also have expertise in the utilization of systemic radioimmunotherapy for loco-regional disease, brain tumors, ovarian carcinoma, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In the diagnostic arena my expertise includes a broad range of diagnostic endocrine applications in nuclear medicine such as receptor scintigraphy, 68Ga-octreotide PET/TC, 18FDG-PET/CT in oncology, radio-immuno-scintigraphy.
I have dedicated the past twenty years of my career with an aim to improve care and outcomes for neuroendocrine cancer patients. My passion is to see eight strategic priorities in the NEN field achieved: the protection of our world class service, improving impact and outcomes for patients who follow a less common pathway, establishing patient experience as being on a par with clinical effectiveness and safety, promoting the necessary investment to deliver a modern and high quality service for NEN patients, both in the acute and community setting, the provision of standardised useful and accurate patient information, a significant increase in the research, education and awareness in NENs, ensuring commissioning processes are fit for purpose and that the NEN community has the attention that is the right of all cancer patients.
She graduated in Physics (University of Milano 1993), and received Medical Physics Specialization (1997).
She worked at the European Institute of Oncology (Milano, Italy) since 1994, in Nuclear Medicine up to 2015, then in the Radiation Research Unit as Director. She gained experience in NM imaging, radioguided surgery, internal dosimetry, risk-benefit analysis for radionuclide therapy. At present, she also coordinates the radiomic projects on CT, MR, and PET images. Her main field of interest is internal dosimetry for PRRT, Radioembolisation, Radioimmunotherapy. She has focused efforts on the optimisation of radionuclide therapies, evaluating impact of therapeutical schemes, clinical factors, and radiobiological models for dose-effect correlations. She published about100 papers. Invited speaker at 50 International Meetings, member of the commission for several Master and PhD thesis, and research projects of the French Ministry of Health.
Wouter W. de Herder M.D. Ph.D. is Professor of Endocrine Oncology at the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is chairman of a multidisciplinary group for endocrine and head of the ENETS centre of excellence for neuroendocrine tumors.
His major research interests are neuroendocrine and endocrine tumors.
Professor de Herder received his M.D. in 1985 and his Ph.D. in 1990 from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
He served as a board member of the Dutch Society for Endocrinology (NVE) (2009–2014). He served as chairman (2006-2008) and vice-chairman of the European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS – 2008-2010). He is member of the advisory board the North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (NANETS) and served as a member (2011-2019) and speaker (2015-2019) of the advisory board of ENETS.
Professor de Herder has (co-)published >450 peer-reviewed papers and book-chapters.
He is a member of the editorial boards of Neuroendocrinology; Endocrinology,
Clarisse Dromain graduated from Medical School at the University of Paris VI, France, in 1992. In 2015, she completed a PhD and was nominated professor of the UNIL in 2018.
Clarisse Dromain is currently the head of oncologic imaging in CHUV University Hospital of Lausanne. Her major research interests lie in gastrointestinal, in particular endocrine and peritoneal tumour imaging.
Throughout her career, Clarisse has been a significant contributor to research and education in radiology and its application in oncology. These contributions include co-authoring 132 peer-reviewed publications, including those relating to the imaging of NETs, and > 60 invited lecture at an international level. In addition, she is a reviewer for renowned journals such as Radiology and European Radiology
Dr. Massimo Falconi is currently Full Professor of Surgery and Chairman of the Pancreatic Unit at the University Vita e Salute, San Raffaele Hospital IRCCS, in Milan, Italy. He studied medicine at the University of Verona, specializing in general surgery, gastroenterology and endoscopy. He has participated in international medical research projects in such diverse places as Germany, Spain, Ecuador, and Japan. A member of many medical societies, including IAP, EPC, ENETS and I and EAHPBA. Prof Falconi is past President of the ENETS. He has written more than 460 peer-reviewed articles.
He has an impact factor calculated on the basis of JCR 2016 of more than 2,000 and his h index on Scopus is 79.
Melpomeni Fani is Professor of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry and the head of the division of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland. She is working on targeted radiopharmaceuticals for oncological diseases in preclinical and clinical settings. Her achievements are linked with the development and first-in-man use of radiolabelled somatostatin receptor antagonists for imaging and therapy of neuroendocrine tumours, among others. She has authored 50+ scientific papers and 5 invited book chapters. She is in the editorial board of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Frontiers in Medicine and act as a reviewer for many journals and research funding organisations. She is member of the EANM, SNMMI and ESMI and expert board member on (radio)peptides in various pharmaceutical companies. Prof. Fani is chemist by training and she holds a Master degree in Biochemistry (2000) and a PhD in Radiopharmacy (2003) from the University of Athens, Greece.
Prof. Dr. Ken Herrmann, MBA graduated from Charite Berlin Medical School in 2004 after completing away electives and ERASMUS exchanges in France, Switzerland, Chile and the US. His further training included the Doctors Degree from Humboldt Universität Berlin (2007), board certification for Nuclear Medicine and habilitation (2010) at Technische Universität München and completion of the executive MBA program at Universität Zürich (2011). In May 2011 he joined as Visiting Assistant Professor and was later promoted to tenure track Associate Professor in the Ahmanson Translational Imaging Division of the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. From 2012 to 2016 he served as Vice Chair of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Universitätsklinikum Würzburg. Since August 2016 Professor Herrmann acts as Chair of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Universitätsklinikum Essen and as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA.
Rod is Professor of the University of Melbourne and Director of the Centre for Molecular Imaging at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He is actively involved in the therapeutic nuclear medicine, especially for neuroendocrine tumours, having first established peptide receptor radionuclide therapy in Australia in 1996. In 2018, the Neuroendocrine Service, of which he is Co-Chair, was certified as a European Neuroendocrine Tumour Society Centre of Excellence, the first to be granted beyond Europe. He has published over 450 peer-reviewed articles and more than 20 book chapters. He holds numerous national and international research grants. He is Editor-in-Chief of Cancer Imaging and International Associate Editor of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Rod received a prestigious NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship and was also inducted as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2015 and is the recipient of the 2019 International Cancer Imaging Society Gold Medal.
Prof. Dr. Levent Kabasakal, who is still on duty at the Department of Nuclear Medicine of Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty, has been carrying out his researches and case studies since 1994. His areas of interest include the use of peptide imaging techniques for the radionuclide treatment of malignancies. These include PRRT, Lu-177-PSMA, radioembolisation, and dosimetric applications. He is a graduate of Ankara University, Turkey. He completed his nuclear medicine residency in Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa. He has also post-doctoral education in Medical College of Wisconsin, US. He has lectured nationally and internationally and published on the subject of theranostics. He had contributions on writing of EANM guidelines. His current research focus on dosimetric theranostic applications such as thyroid cancer, neuroendocrine tumor, prostate cancer and liver cancer. He serves as partner of an international randomised phase III trial.
Prof Kaltsas MD PHD FRCP (Lon) was trained in the UK in General Medicine and Endocrinology mainly at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London and developed a special interest in Neuroendocrinology and Neuroendocrine and Adrenal tumors. He is currently the head of the EKPA-LAIKO ENETS center of excellence for Neuroendocrine tumors which is the only accredited in Greece. He has served as a member of the advisory board and excecutive commitee of ENETS and ENEA and is currently a member of the executive commitee of the International Society of Endocrinology. He has been a reviewer in many scientific journals and served as a member of the editorial boarad and currently is an Associate Editor in Neuroendocrinology and the Europena Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has published 294 per-review manuscripts and has attracted more than 13000 citations. His current clinical and research interest is in the diagnosis and management of neuroendcorine tumors.
Dr. Jolanta Kunikowska is a nuclear medicine as well as internal medicine physician specialist. She is currently assistant professor at the Nuclear Medicine Department, Medical University, Warsaw/Poland. She has a broad interest in positron emission tomography (PET), molecular imaging applications in oncology and theragnostics (radionuclide therapy). She has a particular interest in novel PET radiotracers, and theragnostic applications including prostate, neuroendocrine tumors and glioblastoma. She has authored over 90 peer-reviewed articles and several book chapters. She received several prestigious awards provided by various scientific communities including the Gold prize for Hisada award in 2018 and Marie Curie Award for outstanding scientific work presented at the 29th Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) in Barcelona in 2016. She is currently a President-Elect of the EANM.
Val Lewington is Professor of Therapeutic Nuclear Medicine at Kings College, London, and Honorary Consultant in Nuclear Medicine at Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital, London. As Clinical Lead for nuclear medicine therapy, her clinical practice and research interests are molecular imaging and treatment for thyroid cancer, neuroendocrine tumours and prostate cancer. She has worked extensively in the translational development of bone targeted molecular radiotherapy for skeletal metastases.
She is Programme Director for the UK post graduate training programme in Nuclear Medicine and, as Chair of Education for the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (2014-16), steered the launch of ESMIT, which delivers cross specialty, multimodality imaging and therapy training for nuclear medicine specialists.
Professor of Endocrine Oncology,Medical Faculty Uppsala University since 1995. Former head of Center of excellence ofEndocrine Tumors. Dean of the Medical Faculty June 2002-July 2008.Adjunct Professor of Surgery at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, US. One of the founders of European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS) and North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (NANETS). Pioneered treatment of NETs with somatostatin analogs and interferon.Developed the first radio-immunoassay for Chromogranin A in Europe. Developed specific tracers for Molecular Imaging of NETs( C-11 5 HTP) with PET scans. In 1988 he reported the localization of the MEN-I gene on Chromoson 11. He has more than 600 publications in the field of NETs with an H-factor of 79. Member of the Royal Society of Sciences and Swedish Society of Medical Research. Past president of ENETS. National and International Rewards (Life achievements awards, ENETS, NANETS, APNETS)
Dermot O’Toole is Professor in Gastroenterology and Clinical Medicine at Trinity College Dublin and Consultant Gastroenterologist in St James’s Hospital and St Vincent’s University Hospital Dublin. He graduated from TCD and has postgraduate degrees from TCD, Universities of Paris and Angers. He is National Lead in the field of neuroendocrine tumours in Ireland. He has served on the executive committee of the European Neuroendocrine Tumours Society (ENETS) and is current Chair of ENETS helping to develop guideline papers and standards of care initiatives in the field of NET. He served as Chair of the ENETS-driven European Centre of Excellence program from 2008-18. He has been involved in many national and international research activities in GI oncology and is a member of several professional bodies in Europe and North America serving as advisor on national health care projects/initiatives and on patient advocacy groups.
Professor Marianne Pavel received her medical degree in 1992 from the GeorgAugust University in Göttingen, Germany. In 1994 she completed her residency at the Friedrich-Alexander University of ErlangenNürnberg, Germany. Board certified as a specialist internal medicine in 2000 and endocrinology and diabetes in 2001, she was appointed as Vice Head of the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Friedrich-Alexander University in 2001. At the University she built up a Center for NET disease in Germany and co-founded the first support group for NET patients. In 2007 she took a position as an Assistant Director at the Charité University Hospital. From May 2007 to May 2017 she was the Lead of the Neuroendocrine Tumor Section at the Department of Hepatology and Gastroenterology, Charité, Berlin. She established a Clinical Trial Center for NETs at the Charité University, CVK and conducted numerous clinical trials in NET. She was conferred a Professorship for NET Disease at the Charité University in January 2010, and was nominated as Representative of Gastroenterology for NETs at the Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center in June 2010. Since 2005 she has participated in ENETS activities (including guideline development, consensus meetings and clinical trial activities). Since April 2014 she is a member of the Executive Committee of ENETS. In May 2017, she was appointed as a Chair of the Division of Endocrinology.
Aldo Scarpa is professor of Pathology and Molecular Pathology. He is the Director of the ARC-NET Research Centre for the Applied Research on Cancer at the University of Verona and Director of Pathology at the Hospital Trust of Verona, Italy. Dr. Scarpa received his MD from the University of Padova, and his PhD in Molecular Pathology from the University of Verona. Early in his medical career he served as a family practitioner and thereafter as deputy director of the Clinical Pathology Laboratory of the Military Hospital of Verona before completing his Residency in Pathology at the University of Parma. Dr. Scarpa has been a pioneer since the early ’80s in molecular biology of cancer. His research interests include cancer pathology and genetics including molecular marker discovery and molecular diagnosis. He is the Leader of the Italian contribution within the International Cancer Genome Consortium. His work has been published in over 300 peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Jonathan Strosberg is a professor at the Moffitt Cancer Center, specializing in management of neuroendocrine malignancies. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Cornell University Medical College, and completed his fellowship at the Moffitt Cancer Center. He leads the NET division at Moffitt and heads the GI department research program.
Dr. Strosberg has published over 140 articles and book chapters on the diagnosis and management of neuroendocrine malignancies in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Annals of Oncology, Annals of Surgery, Cancer, and other major journals, and has written twelve articles for UptoDate. He serves on the board of directors of the North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (NANETS), on the neuroendocrine guidelines committee of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), and on the neuroendocrine task force of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Anders Sundin is Professor of Radiology at Uppsala University and Senior Consultant at Uppsala University Hospital and formerProfessor of Radiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. His work is concentrated mainly on endocrine and neuroendocrine imaging with cross-sectional radiological and nuclear medicine imaging.
Since 1993 he has been involved in PET-research and development of new PET-tracers. In the European Neuroendocrine Tumour Society (ENETS) Scientific Advisory Board he led the development of guidelines on radiological and nuclear medicine imaging and has participated in writing the Nordic NET guidelines and the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) guidelines for molecular imaging of NETs. He reviews abstracts for the ESR, EANM and ENETS annual meetings and manuscripts for a number of scientific journals. He is supervisor for several PhD students and has published approximately 180 scientific papers, reviews and book chapters.
David Taïeb is full professor of Nuclear Medicine at Aix-Marseille University, France.
He is member of the EANM Oncology & Theranostics Committee. He holds numerous research grants and is co-editor of 2 textbooks dedicated to Nuclear Endocrinology. He has over 180 peer-reviewed publications. A major focus of his clinical research in collaboration with the NIH, has been to assess the relationship between imaging phenotypes and genotypes in pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma (PPGL). In addition, he is actively involved in radionuclide therapy with a major focus on endocrine neoplasms. He is also affiliated to INSERM (French Institute of Health and Medical Research) with several on-going basic research projects on castration-resistant prostate cancer and nanotheranostics.
More recently, he has coordinated the EANM Practice Guideline/SNMMI Procedure Standard 2019 for radionuclide imaging of PPGL. In 2020 he will co-chair the 6th international symposium on PPGL.
Prof. Irene Virgolini is the Director of the University Clinic of Nuclear Medicine at the Medical University Innsbruck. Her focus in clinical research lies in the development of new radiopharmaceuticals for the “theragnostics”. The Department is involved in national and international co-operation, including the participation in expert committees as well as in scientific projects of the IAEA, both in preclinical development and in the clinical application of radiopharmaceuticals for diagnosis and therapy. Virgolini`s work is also concerned with the patient-related “quality of life” within the scope of individualized high-dose therapy. The clinical work and recent research has focused on the treatment of metastasized prostate cancer. Virgolini has published more than 200 papers, her total impact factor is around 1000, the Hirsch Index 40 (based on Web of Science). She presented > 300 lectures on the topics of molecular therapy worldwide. 2018 Virgolini became the President of WARMTH.
Damian Wild received an M.D. from the University of Basel in 2004 and finished his training in Nuclear Medicine in 2007. He completed his Ph.D. in 2011 at the Institute of Nuclear Medicine, University College London. He was appointed by the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, as Head and Professor of Nuclear Medicine in 2012. Since 2014 he is also the Head of the Center of Neuroendocrine- and Endocrine Tumors at the University Hospital Basel. His main research interests are the development, clinical translation and evaluation of novel radiotracers in the field of oncology including neuroendocrine tumors. He has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals including New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.
James Yao, MD, is professor and chair of the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. He earned his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and completed a clinical fellowship in medical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. His clinical and translational research interests are focused on the development of novel clinical trials and the identification of biomarkers for patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). As a clinical investigator, he has served as PI on numerous national and international clinical trials for patients with gastrointestinal malignancies, including the phase III RADIANT-3 and RADIANT-4 studies, which advanced the standard of care for patients with advanced lung, pancreatic and gastrointestinal NETs. He serves on the NCI Investigational Drug Steering Committee, and is a founding member and past Chairman of the North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society.