Scientific Committee

Lillian Sung, Canada

Chair and Representatives Pediatric Hematology and Oncology

Dr. Sung joined the staff at The Hospital for Sick Children in September 2004 after completing fellowships in Haematology, Infectious Diseases and Clinical Investigation and receiving a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. She is a Paediatric Oncologist and Clinician Scientist with an independent research program focused on supportive care for children with cancer. Her overall goal is to optimize supportive care for children with cancer, with an aim to maximize quality of life, survival and cost-effectiveness. She is the Chair of Cancer Control and Supportive Care for the Children’s Oncology Group (COG). This group oversees all studies of supportive care including studies related to symptom management and patient-reported outcomes. Her research program is currently focused on symptom screening and interventions to reduce fatigue in paediatric cancer patients. She holds a Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute Impact Grant and has previously received operating grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the National Institutes of Health (NIH, R21). She is the Co-Principal Investigator of the COG National Cancer Institute Community Oncology Research Program (UG1CA189955) and an NIH R25 in collaboration with the American Society of Hematology. Her clinical focus is on the inpatient care of children and adolescents with leukemia and lymphoma. She also has a major focus on research education. She has taught graduate courses for the School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto since her faculty appointment and she currently co-directs an advanced randomized trials course. In addition, she has contributed to the development of the Clinical Research Training Institute supported by the American Society of Hematology and developed a research training course in Latin America and Qatar.

Susanne Gatz, UK

Representative Pediatric Hematology and Oncology

Dr Susanne Gatz is a clinician scientist who aims to combine her clinical expertise in paediatric solid tumours with her laboratory interests and expertise into translational research into DNA repair and sarcoma to ultimately identify better treatments for children with cancer, in particular sarcomas.
Susanne joined the University of Birmingham, UK as senior clinical lecturer in Paediatric Oncology in October 2018. She is based at the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit within the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences. She is involved in the paediatric cancer trial portfolio of the unit with focus on sarcomas (eg the overarching platform trial FaR-RMS for rhabdomyosarcoma patients where the University of Birmingham is the international sponsor), and is leading on taking forward novel agents in rhabdomyosarcoma within the trial setting and in particular on developing biomarkers for these agents alongside the trial. Susanne is further linking with the re-known DNA repair and genomics labs of the Institute for preclinical/translational research into sarcoma models.
For her role as honorary consultant in Paediatric Oncology Susanne is looking after patents with solid tumours at the Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
With regards to her expertise in DNA repair, Susanne is leading on two treatment arms within the paediatric Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer (ITCC) ESMART (NCT02813135) stratified medicine basket study; arm D is investigating the combination of the PARP inhibitor Olaparib and irinotecan in paediatric patients with either Ewing’s sarcoma or tumours with genomic alterations in the homologous recombination repair pathway and is currently in Phase II (Phase I presented at ASCO 2019 and SIOP 2019), Arm N is about to start recruitment and is investigating the combination of Olaparib with an ATR inhibitor.
Susanne is a member of several clinical committees and study groups including the UK sarcoma clinical studies group including the Young Onset Soft tissue Sarcoma and bone sarcoma subgroup, the Genomic Tumour Advisory Board of the West Midlands, UK, and the European paediatric Soft tissue sarcoma Study Group (EpSSG) Phase I/II study committee, where she is also the translational lead.

Asim Belgaumi, Pakistan

Representative Pediatric Hematology and Oncology

Andrea Cappellano, Brazil

Representative Pediatric Hematology and Oncology

Christian Carrie, France

Representative Radiation Oncology Group

Pablo Lobos, Argentina

Representative Surgical Oncology Group

Certified Pediatric Surgeon since 1998. Staff Surgeon at the Department of Pediatric Surgery of Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires since 2000. Chair of General Pediatric Surgery since 2006. Vice- Director of the Pediatric Surgery Programme at University of the Hospital Italiano. Director of the Fellowship Program on Pediatric Surgical Oncology since 2009. Member of the Executive Committee of IPSO (International Society of Pediatric Surgical Oncology) since 2018. IPSO Program Committee Chair since 2019. IPSO representative at SIOP Scientific Committee since 2019. Chair of the Surgical Chapter of SLAOP (Latin American Society of Pediatric Oncology) since 2020.

Stephen Sands, USA

Representative Paediatric Psycho Oncology

Pernilla Pergert, Sweden

Representative Nursing Group

Wade Kyono, USA

Chair, Local Organising Committee

Dr. Wade Kyono is a full-time clinician with fifteen percent of his time devoted to research and education. He is the principal investigator for COG and coordinates these cooperative group research activities with the University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center NCI Community Oncology Research Program (UHCC NCORP). His areas of interest include neutrophil/ myeloid cell signaling and function, iron overload/ chelation therapy, hematopoietic progenitor cell transplant for non-malignant conditions, as well as general clinical pediatric oncology. His prior research in neutrophil function and signaling in Pacific Islander children with increased infections was supported by a NIH/RCMI minority institution grant (CCRE) funded through the Kapi’olani Clinical Research Center, and a Leahi Fund Hawaii Community Foundation Grant. He is involved with the 1st year clinical skills preceptorship and the teaching of 3rd and 4th year medical students during their pediatric rotations, along with the training of pediatric residents. He participates as a Medical Advisory Board member for the Hawai‘i Chapter of Make-A-Wish. Dr. Kyono attended Johns Hopkins University in Maryland prior to receiving an MD degree and completing a Pediatric residency at John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii. He completed a fellowship at Children’s Hospital LA, Division of Hem-Onc before returning to Hawaii. He is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at JABSOM.