Marco Wachtel is a Senior Scientist at the University Children's Hospital Zurich. He finished studies of biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 1997, received his Ph.D. at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 2001, and finished habilitation at the medical faculty of the University of Zurich in 2018. His main focus is on pediatric sarcomas, with a special emphasis on fusion oncogenes, in particular PAX3-FOXO1 in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma.
Dr. Didier Surdez studied at the University of Basel (Switzerland), graduating with a degree in pharmacy (PharmD) in 2001. He then moved to Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL (Switzerland), where he obtained his Ph.D. in 2007. After a post-doctoral stay in Professor Olivier Delattre’s laboratory, in 2014, he was appointed as a senior scientist at the Institut Curie in Paris. In 2021, he became an Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and group leader at the Balgrist University Hospital. His research focuses on the identification of therapeutic vulnerabilities against bone sarcomas. His research on Ewing sarcoma has highlighted key EWSR1-FLI1 targets (PRKCB), vulnerabilities (PARPi), and secondary alterations (STAG2) in this cancer. Since 2012, he has been actively involved in the EE2012, rEECur, and Combinair3 clinical trials.
Professor Thomas G. P. Grünewald studied medicine at the University of Würzburg (Germany), after completing clinical rotations in Germany, Japan, the USA, the UK, and Argentina. He obtained his M.D. in clinical biochemistry in 2008, before starting his clinical training in paediatric oncology in the Department of Paediatrics of the TU Munich (TUM). In 2012, he obtained his PhD in Medical Life Science and Technology from TUM. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institut Curie in Paris, in 2014, he was appointed resident physician and principal investigator at the Institute of Pathology of the LMU Munich. In 2020, he was appointed head of the division of Translational Pediatric Sarcoma Research at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Hopp-Children’s Cancer Center (KiTZ) in Heidelberg. Since 2021, he has held a full Professorship in the Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg. In parallel, he serves as senior pathologist at the Institute of Pathology of the Heidelberg University Hospital. His research aims to elucidate the interplay of germline variation and somatic mutation, especially in Ewing sarcoma, and examines how somatic driver mutations interfere with developmental pathways to promote tumorigenesis, tumor heterogeneity and drug resistance.
Beat W. Schäfer is the Scientific Department Head in the Department of Oncology and Children’s Research Center, University Children’s Hospital. He received his Ph.D. at the Institute of Cell Biology ETH, Zürich in 1986 and finished his Postdoctoral research at the School of Medicine, Stanford University, USA in 1989. He was the group leader of Clinical Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1989 to 2002. His research area is molecular and cellular cancer research.
