Professeure Silke Gillessen Sommer

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.