Silke Gillessen Sommer, MD, is Head of the Medical Oncology Department and Medical Scientific Director of the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland (IOSI) at the Ospedale San Giovanni in Bellinzona.

Previously, she held an appointment as a Professor at the University of Manchester, in the Division for Cancer Sciences and a position as an honorary consultant in Medical Oncology at the Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

From 2008 to 2018, she was senior consultant, specialized in GU cancers, in the Department of Oncology/Hematology at Kantonsspital St. Gallen, Switzerland, where she also was the Head the Clinical Trial Unit.

Prof. Gillessen Sommer received her medical degree from the University of Basel, Switzerland. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Adult Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA, before joining Kantonsspital St. Gallen as a consultant in 2001.

Since 1995, Dr. Gillessen Sommer has served as a principle and co-investigator for multiple phase I, II, and III clinical trials. Including “first-in-human” studies. A lot of her work has been published in world leading journals, including Clinical Cancer Research, Journal of National Cancer Institute, Clinical Genitourinary Cancer, European Journal of Cancer, European Urology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lancet, New England Institute of Medicine and Annals of Oncology. Her awards include the Byk-Preis, the SIAK/ESSEX Prize and the SAKK/PFIZER Award.

Silke serves on the ESMO Scientific Subcommittees for GU Oncology for 2020, as she previously has done in 2018 and 2014. She has been chair of the Committee for Prostate Cancer for ESMO since 2018.
In 2020, she became Track chair Prostate Cancer ESMO Asia. In 2017, she became Member of the ASCO panel for endorsement of guidelines for prostate cancer and the EAN guidelines panel for prostate cancer
She is a founder of the St.Gallen Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference (APCCC), and will organize the conference in 2021; having previously organized the conferences in 2019, 2017 and 2015. She was nominated in 2016 and 2018 to be an international representative of the ASCO GU scientific committee. As of 2017 she has been a Member of the ASCO panel for the endorsement of guidelines for prostate cancer. She is Past-Chair of the EORTC GUCG, and past-president of the SAKK GU cancers group.

Professor Serge Leyvraz, MD is senior consultant at the Charité Comprehensive Cancer in the Charité Universitätsmedizin-Berlin since 2013.

Prof. S. Leyvraz studied Medicine in Switzerland mainly at the University Hospital in Lausanne, and did his complete training in Hematology-Oncology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in the department of Professor James Holland.

In 1988, he was appointed as Head of the Foundation du Centre Pluridisciplinaire d’Oncologie at the CHUV, first as Privat-Docent and since 2009 as full Professor at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at the University of Lausanne.

From 1988 to 2013, he succeeded to develop the oncology department to make it a multidisciplinary service widely recognized in Switzerland and abroad. The focus of the department was to develop the best patient-oriented care, in parallel to the expansion of the clinical and translational research.

The research goals of Prof.S. Leyvraz were mainly centered on the treatment of sarcomas, melanomas, especially ocular melanomas, and genetically modified cellular immunotherapies.

He was for more than 10 years the chairperson of the sarcoma group at the SAKK and of the ocular melanoma subgroup at the EORTC. He has been member, among others, of the Scientific Committee of SAKK, of Swiss Cancer Ligue, and of l’Intergroupe Francophone du Myélome.

He has been Expert for German Federal Ministery of Education and Research, Scientific board funding initiative for rare disease research consortia.
Prof. S. Leyvraz is author or co-author of more than 350 publications in high-impact medical journals.

In 1999 he co-founded with Mr Olivier Daulte the research foundation: Fond’Action contre le Cancer.

Le Professeur Thomas Zilli, principalement impliqué dans la prise en charge des cancers urologiques avec un intérêt particulier pour la recherche dans le domaine du cancer de la prostate et de l’innovation technologique, est actuellement chef de service au sein du service de Radio-Oncologie de l’Institut Oncologique de la Suisse Italienne (IOSI) – Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale (EOC).

Thomas Zilli est également Professeur auprès de la Facoltà di Scienze Biomediche de l’Université de la Suisse italienne (USI) et affilié à la Faculté de Médecine de l’Université de Genève (Unige).

Dr Annick Mühlethaler-Mottet, PhD, PD, is the Head of the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Laboratory of the University Hospital of Lausanne (DFME, CHUV) since August 2023. Dr Annick Mühlethaler-Mottet studied biology at the University of Geneva and received her PhD in Biology from the same university in 1998 working on the regulation of CIITA gene expression, the master controller of MHC-II gene expression, in the Laboratory of Prof. Bernard Mach (Department of Genetics and Microbiology). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Geneva, focusing on the MHC-II regulation, before joining the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Laboratory of the CHUV in 2001 as a postdoctoral fellow. She was appointed Senior Research Fellow in 2009 and since 2015, became Principal Investigator in the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Laboratory leading a research sub-group focusing on neuroblastoma, a pediatric cancer of the sympathetic nervous system.

She has over 20 years of experience in the fields of biology and genetics of neuroblastoma. Her current research interests lie in identifying new therapeutic targets to improve treatment options by focusing on the molecular changes that drive tumor initiation, metastatic spread, and progression. She is currently acting as reviewer for national and international funding institutes. Since 2015, she has held the role of the Switzerland’s delegate of to various SIOPEN specialist committees, which conduct translational research linked to Phase III clinical trials.

Nicolas von der Weid is Professor for Paediatrics and paediatric Haematology-Oncology at the University Children’s Hospital (UKBB) and the University of Basel. Since 2012, he’s the Head of the Ped Hem/Onc Dpt at UKBB. He leads the Outcomes Research Group in paediatric Oncology at the Department for Clinical Research of the University of Basel.

He has been the President of SPOG (Swiss Paediatric Oncology Group) between 2005 and 2010 and is currently President of Childhood Cancer Switzerland, a national organization grouping all stakeholders, incl. patients, families and survivors, in the field of paediatric oncology in Switzerland.

His research focus since about 30 years is in the field of survivorship and long-term outcomes after paediatric cancer; he is currently the Principal Investigator of SURfit, a randomized intervention study with sport/physical activity in adult survivors of a cancer in childhood and of the national CardioOnco study looking in a prospective multicentre design at early detection of cardiac toxicity.

NvdW has just been elected (March 2021) as Vice-President of the Swiss Society of Paediatrics and Member of the Senate of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences.

Prof. Dr. Alfred Zippelius, MD, is full Professor of Translational Oncology and Deputy Head of the Department of Medical Oncology at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland.
He is heading a research group focusing on translational research in the area of cancer immunology & immunotherapy at the Department of Biomedicine. In addition, he is conducting clinical trials as well as supervising clinical research.

Prof. Zippelius studied medicine at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich, Germany, where he also performed experimental work for his MD thesis in the laboratory of world-renowned German Immunologist Prof. Dr. Gert Riethmüller. After this he performed post-doctoral research work as a German Funding Agency (DFG)/Emmy-Noether fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and thereafter became principal investigator in the Tumor Immunology lab of the Medical Oncology Department at University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland.
He was then appointed Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Professor and group leader of the Laboratory of Cancer Immunology, Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, where he subsequently became full Professor of Translational Oncology. He has full responsibility for clinical trial design and applications and the research in the Laboratory of Cancer Immunology.

Prof. Zippelius is author of > 150 high-impact publications and inventor of several patents in the field of cancer immunology, and during his career has received numerous fellowships and awards, including competitive DFG/Emmy-Noether fellowship, SNF Excellenza and Dora Seif Cancer Award. Prof. Zippelius is on a number of international review and advisory boards, including review functions for leading journals such as NEJM, Cell, Nature Cancer and Nature Medicine, and for national and international funding institutes. Prof. Zippelius is Section Editor at JITC and also active in many national and international professional societies.

Maya Zumstein-Shaha, PhD, RN, FAAN is Professor and Adjunct Head of the Master of Science in Nursing Program at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, Department of Health in Bern, Switzerland.

Prof. Zumstein-Shaha’s research addresses the experience of persons with newly diagnosed cancer to improve understanding and care of this population. She has led several funded research studies that resulted in the development of a middle-range nursing theory entitled “The Omnipresence of Cancer”, which is used in Bachelor and Master nursing education. Findings from her most recent study indicated that the experience of a diagnosis of cancer still requires additional efforts to support persons in such moments. Work with international colleagues led to redefining ‘nursing science’ in a way that can focus and guide nursing research.

She also worked to establish one of the first Swiss Primary Care Advanced Practice Nursing Curriculums. The impact of her research is far-reaching and cited in journals of nursing, interprofessional collaboration and spirituality. Publications from research also significantly broadened the knowledge base on nursing knowledge development and cancer care. Prof. Zumstein-Shaha serves on the Swiss regulatory board for Advanced Nursing Practice, and as a member of the Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics.

Prof. Zumstein-Shaha completed nursing school in Switzerland, received her MS and PhD from the St Bartholomew School of Nursing and Midwifery of City University in London, UK, and completed her post-doctoral studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore, MD, USA.