Inaugural EUnetCCC Educational SeminarSpeakers
Albrecht Stenzinger
University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany
Albrecht Stenzinger is Professor of Molecular Tumor Pathology, Vice Chair of the Institute of Pathology (IPH), as well as the Director of the IPH Center for Molecular Pathology (CMP) and Section Head for Molecular Diagnostics and Biomarker Development at the Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany. Dr. Stenzinger is holding an MD degree from the University of Giessen, completed his residency and fellowship training in pathology at the Charité University Hospital, Berlin and the University Hospital Heidelberg. He is a board- certified surgical pathologist, molecular pathologist, and senior attending. Dr. Stenzinger received postdoctoral training at the University of Heidelberg and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, USA. He has broad expertise in molecular pathology as well as molecular diagnostics and works in the field of translational research and genetics of solid tumors.
Ana Vivancos
Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Spain
Dr. Ana Vivancos obtained her PhD in 2006 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, working on the response of fission yeast to oxidative stress. In 2007 she joined the Colorectal Cancer Lab at the Institut de Recerca de Barcelona (IRB), where she worked on WNT signaling in colorectal cancer. She then moved to the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG, Barcelona), where she set up the Ultrasequencing Core Facility that incorporated the very first 2nd generation instrument in Spain (Genome Analyzer, Illumina). In early 2010 Ana moved to the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) to assume the position as Principal Investigator of the Cancer Genomics Group. Ana's research activities focus on developing and validating novel tests, optimized to FFPE-derived nucleic acids and liquid biopsy, later on used in both clinical and translational research. Importantly, the lab works under ISO15189 accreditation environment. Dr. Ana Vivancos is serving as an editorial member and reviewer of several international reputed journals and is member of many international affiliations. She has authored many research articles/books focused on clinical NGS test development and validation, Cancer Genomics and Translational Research.
Anders Edsjö
Skane University Hospital CCC & Lund University
Anders Edsjö, MD PhD is a Clinical Pathologist, Senior Consultant and Section Head at the Department of Clinical Genetics, Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics, Lund, Sweden and the vice director of Genomic Medicine Sweden, chairing the Solid Tumor Work Package within the same organization. He is active in national and international efforts on development and quality assurance of molecular diagnostics with focus on cancer and engaged in upstarting EU-consortia aiming at precision diagnostics and precision cancer medicine clinical trials, like PCM4EU, PRIME-ROSE, EUnetCCC and JA Precision Cancer Medicine
Arnaud Bayle
Gustave Roussy, France
Dr Arnaud Bayle is a medical oncologist, health economist and member of the Molecular Tumour Board at Gustave Roussy Cancer Center (Villejuif, France). He is also Assistant Professor at Paris Saclay University.
Dr Bayle trained as a medical oncologist (MD) at Paris Descartes University and obtained the Silver medal from Paris Medical School in 2020. In parallel, Dr Bayle graduated in 2015 from ESSEC Business School with a Master of Science (MSc) in Management and finished first in his year of the ESSEC Chair of Health Systems (class of 2013). Dr Bayle has a specific interest in Public Health and holds a PhD in Health Economics from Paris Saclay University in the field of biomarkers and precision medicine.
In addition to his clinical experience at Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) and at Gustave Roussy in the Drug Development Department (DITEP), Dr Bayle has been working for the World Health Organization (WHO) at the office to the European Union in Brussels. He also worked for the French Ministry of Health at the Directorate of Social Security (DSS) in charge of healthcare system financing and at the Inspection Générale des Affaires Sociales (IGAS), which is the French Government audit, evaluation and inspection office for health, social security, social cohesion, employment and labour policies and organisations. He is currently a Permanent member of the Commission on Diagnostic, Prognostic and Predictive Health Technologies Assessment (CEDiag) at the French National Authority for Health (HAS). Dr Bayle is also a member of ESMO Public Policy Committee and ESMO Cancer Medicine Committee.
Åsmund Flobak
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, St Olav's University
Åsmund Flobak is an Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), a consultant oncologist at St Olavs hospital, and a senior researcher at Sintef Industry. He has a dual background as a medical doctor (MD) and a Master of Science in nanotechnology. He completed his PhD in medicine in 2016 and became a certified specialist in clinical oncology in 2023. Dr. Flobak leads the Flobak lab at NTNU (https://flobaklab.com/), which focuses on computer simulations of cancer cell signaling and functional precision medicine using patient-derived cancer cells to identify potential therapies. He is actively involved in clinical research, serving on the trial management committee and working as a study doctor for the IMPRESS-Norway precision medicine clinical trial, and is PI for the functional precision medicine trial COSENSE-1. Dr. Flobak also leads the "Norwegian Precision Medicine Cancer Group" (NPCG) for oncologists and is affiliated with the MATRIX Centre for Functional Precision Medicine. An award-winning educator, he teaches medical students in molecular biology and consultation techniques, from cell cycle lectures to how to break bad news to patients. He has been recognized with the "Lecturer of the Year" award for medical students at NTNU in 2020 and 2023 and the Norwegian Medical Association's teaching prize in 2024. His research and clinical work are focused on providing decision support for oncologists, particularly in optimizing drug combinations for personalized cancer therapy. Driven by his early experiences as a clinical oncologist, he aims to improve targeted therapies by tailoring treatment strategies to individual patients.
Cristina Nogueira
Patient Advisory Council in IPO-Porto Compreensive Cancer Center, Portugal
Cristina is graduate in Law and has been a practicing lawyer since 1996. Her professional path also includes social volunteering, offering night-time legal support to highly marginalised populations.
Diagnosed in 2016 with triple-negative breast cancer, she is a brain metastatic patient with no active disease since 2018. Her personal experience with cancer led her, from 2017 onwards, to a committed role in patient advocacy, representing and amplifying the voice of oncology patients at national and international levels.
She has been invited as a speaker, consultant, and patient representative in conferences, debates, training initiatives, media programmes, and collaborative working groups organised by institutions such as IPO-Porto, the Portuguese League Against Cancer, the Portuguese Society of Oncology, major media outlets, universities, and public institutions.
As a member of EVITA – Hereditary Cancer Association, HTA Ambassadors and EUPATI, she has participated in national and European working groups involving patient organisations and the health sector, contributing to improved cancer literacy, patient rights, and the development of oncology-related initiatives in Portugal.
In April 2025, she joined the IPO-Porto first Patient Advisory Council.
Elisabeth Waller
Patient Representative from VHIO, Spain
Liz was diagnosed with an oligodendroglioma (Grade II) in 2010 after experiencing a tonic–clonic seizure. She underwent six cycles of PCV chemotherapy at the Royal Marsden (London) between September 2010 and August 2011. In 2022, she learned that her remission had ended four years earlier. The following year, she secured an extended place on a Phase 1 trial of an IDH inhibitor under the care of Dra. María Vieito at Vall d’Hebron (Barcelona) and her tumour has remained stable since.
Liz holds a BSc in Social Anthropology and an MA in Communications Management. She spent two decades in a London consultancy firm advising major brands on corporate reputation and leading behaviour-change campaigns for the UK Government. Her multi-award-winning work spanned initiatives addressing teenage pregnancy, sexual health and childhood obesity, as well as national campaigns for the film industry.
Since her diagnosis, Liz, together with her extended family, has raised over £120,000 to contribute to the underfunded area of brain tumour research.
Erika Tóth
National Institute of Oncology, Hungary
Since 1991, Erika Tóth has worked at the National Institute of Oncology. Over the years,
she has gained experience in many areas of tumour pathology, including breast,
gastrointestinal, head and neck, mediastinal tumours, and lymphomas. Currently, her work is
primarily focused on head and neck tumours, lymphomas, and molecular pathology
diagnostics. Since 2000, Erika Tóth has been involved in organizing the first molecular
pathology laboratory in Hungary. Since 2012, she has led the Department of Surgical and
Molecular Pathology at the National Institute of Oncology in Hungary. The department
currently analyzes 14,000 surgical specimens annually, the majority of which are large
resection specimens, and performs 5,000 next-generation sequencing tests on various solid
tumours each year, including 300 comprehensive genetic tests. In 2024, the department also
introduced liquid biopsy tests, utilizing both a small 50-gene panel and a large 500-gene
panel. The department has many residents, and Erika Tóth is actively involved in their
training, as well as in national residency and PhD training programs organized by
Semmelweis University. She also delivers lectures in the continuing education of specialists,
primarily on molecular pathology.
Faisal Mahmood
Odense University Hospital and University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Faisal Mahmood is a Professor of Medical Physics with over 20 years of experience in oncological imaging and radiotherapy. He earned his MSc in Biophysics from the University of Copenhagen in 2002 and transitioned from nuclear medicine to radiation therapy, completing a PhD focused on electrochemotherapy for brain tumors.
He leads the Laboratory of Radiation Physics at Odense University Hospital, Department of Oncology, where his research centers on MRI-based biomarkers for personalized, biologically adaptive radiotherapy. He played a key role in the implementation of Denmark’s first MRI-Linac and continues to advance quantitative MRI techniques, such as diffusion-weighted MRI, to improve treatment precision and effectiveness.
Lara Nonell
Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Spain
With a strong foundation in mathematics and advanced training in information technology and biomedicine, Lara Nonell has led the Bioinformatics Unit at VHIO since 2021 and has served as Associate Professor in the Department of Biosciences at the Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya since 2015. Previously, she coordinated the data analysis unit at Hospital del Mar Research Institute for 13 years.
Holding a degree in Mathematics from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1996), a Master’s in Information Technology Management from La Salle, Universitat Ramon Llull (2000), and a Doctorate in Biomedicine from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2019), Lara Nonell specializes in omics data modeling, as reflected in the doctoral thesis "New approaches in omics data modelling."
At VHIO, her work focuses on implementing scalable computational infrastructures and state-of-the-art bioinformatics pipelines, enabling robust analysis of multi-omics datasets—including publicly available resources. The group actively applies advanced computational and machine learning models for cancer biomarker discovery and the integration of diverse omics data to advance personalized medicine. Committed to fostering collaborative research, Lara coordinates a dynamic internal network of skilled bioinformaticians and leads initiatives such as a monthly Bioinformatics Journal Club, promoting knowledge exchange and methodological innovation.
Gro Live Fagereng
Oslo University Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Norway
Dr Fagereng is the Project Manager for PRIME-ROSE, a Horizon Europe Mission on Cancer initiative uniting 24 partners across 18 European countries aiming to implement precision cancer medicine and advancing DRUP-like clinical trials. She also leads the precision diagnostics efforts within the European network of Comprehensive Cancer Centers, a Joint Action Project with 161 partners across 31 member states fostering strategic collaboration among Europe’s comprehensive cancer centres. Dr. Gro Live Fagereng earned her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Oslo in 2013. She has previously coordinated the Precision Cancer Medicine initiatives at Oslo University Hospital, driving research strategy and participating in setting-up flagship projects such as the IMPRESS-Norway, a national precision cancer medicine trial, the national infrastructure for precision diagnostics (InPreD), and CONNECT, a public-private partnership for implementing precision medicine. She has also previously worked as Senior Advisor at the Norwegian Hospital Procurement Trust, where she was instrumental in negotiating prices and procuring innovative cancer drugs for hospitals nationwide.
Janne Lehtiö
Karolinska Institutet, SciLifeLab and Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden
Janne Lehtiö has MSc degree from Helsinki University, Finland and PhD in engineering at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. Post the PhD, Lehtiö worked in USA based biotech industry; and obtained his postdoctoral experience in cancer research at Karolinska Institutet (KI), Stockholm, Sweden. In 2015, he was selected to faculty Professor position at KI and since 2021 holds shared clinical professor position at Karolinska Univ. Hospital heading proteomics unit. Lehtiö-labs major research focus in on proteome analysis, systems biology and cancer precision medicine. He’s lab is working from methods development to clinical applications mainly focusing on lung and breast cancer as well as in leukaemia research. Lehtiö has also vast experience on research infrastructures, from heading core facilities and national infrastructure initiatives to expert assignments in the field of technology driven personalized medicine. Between 2018-2023 Lehtiö served, as Scientific Director for SciLifeLab, Sweden’s national bioscience infrastructure and is presently engaged in SciLifeLab-KAW Data Driven Life Science program as a steering group member and precision medicine area-lead. He also serves in Karolinska Comprehensive Cancer Center board of directors and scientific advisory boards for national infrastructures in both Finland (Biocenter Finland) and Norway (NAPI) as well as Cancer Core Europe. Lehtiö is member of Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarding Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.
Jörg Haier
Comprehensive Cancer Centre Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
Prof. Jörg Haier is Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center-MV (Campus Rostock). He is a surgeon by training and has a background as Master in Medical Laws. In leading positions in German CCCs he implemented innovative structures and management for personalized cancer medicine including respective quality management. During the last 10 years his research focusses on ethical issues related to cancer care and decisional uncertainty in clinical processes and shared decision making. In various European initiatives he shares his expertise and participates in implementation work packages.
Kristian Pietras
Lund University Cancer Centre and SciLifeLab, Sweden
Kristian Pietras was awarded a Ph.D. in 2002 at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala University, Sweden. Next, Pietras performed postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco in the laboratory of Douglas Hanahan. Upon his return to Sweden and Karolinska Institutet, Pietras developed his independent line of research, and in 2012, he was recruited as the Grosskopf Professor to Lund University, where he became the founding Director of Lund University Cancer Centre between 2015-2021. As a well-positioned link between basic science, oncology and pharmaceutical industry, Pietras has made important contributions in defining tumors as communicating organs comprising multiple cell types that collectively sustain cancer progression. Pietras has received numerous awards for his research, most notably the Anders Jahre’s Medical Prize for young scientists by Oslo University, The Göran Gustafsson Award by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, The Cancer Researcher of the Year Award by the Swedish Cancer Society, and he has been a member and chairman of the Young Academy of Sweden.
Loic Veringue
Centre Léon Bérard, France
Loic Verlingue, MD, PhD, is a Physician-Scientist involved in the field of Medical Oncology, clinical research and digital healthcare. He is investigator in early phase clinical trials at the Phase 1 Unit at Centre Léon Bérard, Lyon. He also leads the Molecular Tumor Board of Centre Léon Bérard. He is head of the Data Science group in the Saintigny’s team at the Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Lyon (CRCL). His topics of research are Language Models and Artificial Intelligence on molecular data for Precision Oncology.
Luigi de Petris
Karolinska Comprehensive Cancer Center and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Luigi de Petris is a Senior Oncologist, Medical Lead for the Phase I Unit at Karolinska Comprehensive Cancer Center. Directly involved in the development and set up of Molecular tumor boards at the National and International levels, for a structured and multidisciplinary interpretation of clinical actionability of genomic variants.
Matteo Pallocca
CNR IEOMI and BBMRI.it, Italy
Matteo Pallocca is a Computer Scientist devoted to Bioinformatics and Clinical Research. He led the Bioinformatics activities of the Regina Elena National Cancer Institute in Rome from 2018 to 2023. During this period, he co-founded the Bioinformatics Group of the Alliance Against Cancer, the central Cancer Hospital Network in Italy. He coordinated the network's activities related to the Clinical Reporting of molecular assays. He developed a protocol with his group to reanalyse and store Molecular Real-World Data from thousands of past historical profiles. He also taught Bioinformatics and Computational System Biology within the context of the inter-faculty Bachelor's program in Bioinformatics at Sapienza University from 2019 to 2023. This experience in Clinical Bioinformatics training and software framework setup has been summarised in the position paper “Clinical Bioinformatics desiderata for Molecular Tumour Boards” published in 2024 in Briefings in Bioinformatics. In 2023, he also became Secretary of the Italian Bioinformatics scientific society BITS, with the specific aim to spread the Italian Bioinformatics community in Research Hospitals and Biobanks. His current role is Data Engineering Coordinator of the BBMRI.it node, supporting Italian Biobanks in the Data FAIRification process towards -omics profiles federation.
Klaus Pantel
University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
Prof. Dr. Klaus Pantel is Director of the Institute of Tumor Biology at the University
Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. The Institute is part of the Center for
Experimental Medicine and the University Cancer Center (UCCH). Prof. Pantel graduated
from the University of Cologne in 1986 and completed his dissertation in 1987 in the field of
mathematical models of hematopoiesis. After his postdoctoral training in the USA at Wayne
State University, Detroit, where he conducted research on hematopoietic stem cell
regulation, he spent 10 years at the Institute of Immunology at the University of Munich,
where he habilitated in 1995 in the field of experimental immunology and immunotherapies.
Prof. Pantel's pioneering work in the field of micrometastasis and liquid biopsy (analysis of
tumor components in the blood, e.g. circulating tumor cells and circulating nucleic acids
(ctDNA, microRNAs) of solid tumors is reflected in more than 600 publications (h-factor 161)
in excellent high-ranking biomedical and scientific journals (incl. NEJM, Lancet, Nature
Journals, Cancer Cell, Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Discovery, PNAS, JCO,
JNCI, Cancer Res.). His research work has been recognized by the AACR Outstanding
Investigator Award 2010, the German Cancer Award 2010, and four ERC Grants, among
others. He is the Founder and current President of the European Liquid Biopsy Society
(www.elbs.eu) and the Scientific Coordinator/Lead-PI of the EU consortia PANCAID
(https://pancaid-project.eu/) and GUIDE-MRD (www. https://www.guidemrd-horizon.eu/).
Paul Roepman
Hartwig Medical Foundation, Netherlands
Paul Roepman received his PhD in the field of cancer genomics at the University Medical Center Utrecht in 2006 and continued his work on cancer gene (expression) profiling at Agendia (Amsterdam/Irvine CA). From 2014 to 2016, he got educated as a Clinical Molecular Biologist at the St. Antonius Hospital (Utrecht) and the Radboudumc (Nijmegen). Paul moved to Hartwig Medical Foundation in 2017 to further improve the quality and utility of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and to implement this test in diagnostic use. From 2019 to 2025, he joined the team of molecular biologists at the Netherlands Cancer Institute to use WGS (and other technologies) in routine practice. His focus and expertise lie in classification and utilization of results from molecular tests, and to further develop optimal analysis and (clinical) reporting of these complex findings.
Sahar Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn-Khosrovan
Leiden University Medical Centre and CZ Health Insurance, Netherlands
Sahar Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn-Khosrovani is Associate Professor of Medical Oncology, with a special focus on Accessibility of Medicines at the Department of Medical Oncology, Leiden University Medical Centre. As a registered pharmacist specialised in Medicine & Society, she works for CZ Health Insurance in the Netherlands. Sahar is a member of the National Payer’s Evaluation Committee for Specialised Medicines and Companion Diagnostics (CieBAG), National Horizon Scanning Group for Oncology and Haematology, the KWF Dutch Cancer Society – Committee for Biomarkers in the Implementation Phase and VK Prasad Laboratory (University of California, San Francisco). She represents the International Association of Non-for-Profit Healthcare Payers (AIM) in the EU HTA Stakeholder Network.
Santiago Demajo
IRB Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Santiago Demajo is the Scientific Coordinator of the Cancer Genome Interpreter Clinics (CGI-Clinics) project, a major EU-funded initiative aimed at advancing precision cancer medicine through optimized genomic data interpretation. He is also a Senior Researcher at the Barcelona Biomedical Genomics Lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). His primary research is centered on identifying the drivers of cancer and applying these findings to precision oncology. He has contributed to the development of several key bioinformatics tools used in the field, including the Cancer Genome Interpreter. Dr. Demajo holds a Ph.D. in Biomedicine and a Master's degree in Bioinformatics and Biostatistics. His broader scientific background includes extensive research into the molecular mechanisms underlying hematological malignancies and clonal hematopoiesis, with specific expertise in genomics, epigenetics, and transcriptional regulation.
Siri Strand
Oslo University Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Norway
Dr. Strand is a biomedical researcher specializing in cancer biomarkers and precision oncology. She holds a Ph.D. in Medicine from Aarhus University and conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University School of Medicine as part of the Human Tumor Atlas Network, focusing on biomarkers for early-stage breast cancer. She now works at National Infrastructure for Precision Diagnostics in Cancer (InPreD) Norway, based at Oslo University Hospital, where she integrates genomic data into clinical workflows to support cancer diagnostics, treatment decisions, and clinical trial inclusion. Her expertise spans biomarker discovery, bioinformatics, and multi-omics data analysis, with a focus on translating molecular insights into improved cancer care.
Stefan Fröhling
National Center for Tumour Diseases, Germany
Stefan Fröhling has been Head of the Division of Translational Medical Oncology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) since 2019 and Managing Director of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg since 2020. His work at the interface of applied cancer research and clinical care centers on strategies for multidimensional tumor characterization as a basis for academic clinical trials, investigating the efficacy of novel, individualized cancer therapies. In addition to his activities in the field of cross-entity precision oncology, supported by the European Union (EU), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the German Research Foundation (DFG), and the German Cancer Aid (DKH), among others, Stefan Fröhling focuses on translating insights into the biology of rare solid-organ and hematopoietic malignancies into novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies and on understanding and intercepting intratumor heterogeneity. Locally, he directs the NCT Molecular Precision Oncology Program; on a national level, he coordinates the Research Platform “Cancer Genome Analysis” of the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) and the DKFZ/NCT/DKTK MASTER (Molecularly Aided Stratification for Tumor Eradication Research) Program, activities that have paved the way for the widespread implementation of genetically guided precision oncology and its transition into standard care in Germany. Internationally, he is a member of the Board of Directors of Cancer Core Europe (CCE) and has long been active in the European Hematology Association (EHA), including a four-year term as an elected board member. In addition to his scientific and clinical activities, which are characterized by a strong commitment to the involvement of patients as research partners, Stefan Fröhling has a particular interest in the education and training of physician-scientists and medical scientists, illustrated by his role in designing the Heidelberg School of Oncology Fellowship Program and as organizer and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the annual CCE Summer School in Translational Cancer Research.
Tonje Lien
Oslo University Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Norway
Tonje Lien is employed as a Senior Advisor in bioinformatics and biostatistics at the National Infrastructure for Precision Diagnostics in Cancer (InPreD) at the Department of Pathology, Oslo University Hospital, Norway. She has been responsible for recruiting and building the bioinformatics team required to establish data pipelines for the analysis, interpretation, and reporting of large gene panel analyses, and currently coordinates the team (10 employees). In addition to ensuring the development and maintenance of essential bioinformatic tools, she coordinates efforts to achieve national standardization and harmonization. She is also responsible for ongoing work to ensure compliance with relevant EU regulations (IVDR/MDR), as well as IT-related initiatives aimed at increasing automation to expand the capacity for genetic testing in Norway. Furthermore, she is involved in the pilot project for the Norwegian Genome Centre, focusing on data pipelines for large gene panels and whole genome sequencing. Tonje Lien obtained her Master of Science degree from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, her PhD from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oslo and completed her postdoctoral research at the Institute for Cancer Research at Oslo University Hospital. She has participated in clinical trials such as EMIT, ICON, and IMPRESS-Norway.