Executive Committee
Lucas Moreno
Lucas Moreno is a paediatric oncologist dedicated to early phase clinical trials and neuroblastoma. He trained in La Fe (Valencia, Spain), started his career in the Royal Marsden Hospital (London, UK) under the mentorship of Andy Pearson. From 2013 to 2019, he led the Clinical Trials Unit at Hospital Niño Jesus in Madrid, Spain and, from 2019, he leads the Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital & Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Barcelona.
He is an active member of SIOPEN and Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer (ITCC) consortia, and has led the international BEACON-Neuroblastoma randomised trial that recruited 225 patients with relapsed and refractory neuroblastoma and is currently working to set up its continuation, the BEACON2 trial.
His research interests are precision medicine and biomarkers, drug development and clinical trial methodology. He is member of the SIOPEN Executive Committee from 2017. He has been Vice-President (2020-2022) and President Elect (2023) and is from January 2024 on President of SIOPEN.
Maja Beck Popovic
Maja Beck Popovic is Professor of pediatric hematology oncology and Head of the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Unit at the University Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland.
After medical studies in Bern, she obtained her board certificate in pediatrics in Lausanne, and completed then her fellowship in pediatric oncology at the Institut Gustave Roussy in Paris, where her clinical interest in neuroblastoma started. She has been member of SIOPEN from the very early years, in charge as international chair of the LNESG2 protocol (on localized resectable neuroblastoma), and has been coordinating other SIOPEN protocols for Switzerland. She has been member of the SIOPEN executive committee as secretary from 2010 – 2014, as Vice-President from 2016 – 2019, as President from 2020 to 2023 October 2019. She is past president within the SIOPEN executive committee from 2024 on.
Cormac Owens
Dr Owens is a Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Dublin. He trained initially in Dublin, followed by fellowships at Institut Gustave Roussy, Paris and the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. He was a staff physician at Sick Kids before returning home to Dublin in 2013.
His clinical interests are in neuroblastoma, paediatric sarcomas, clinical trial conduct and chemotherapy safety. He is a member of the European Neuroblastoma Society (SIOPEN) executive and clinical trials committees and the international society of paediatric oncology (SIOP) scientific advisory council. He is the clinical lead of the Cancer Clinical Trials Unit at OLCH. He is an associate clinical professor at University College Dublin and a member of the Irish Translational Research Neuroblastoma Group.
He is vice-president within the SIOPEN Executive Committee.
Gudrun Schleiermacher
A physician-scientitist originally from Heidelberg, Germany, Gudrun Schleiermacher studied medicine in Heidelberg, including a final year in the USA, and obtained her basic medical training as a pediatrician in Paris, France and Edinburgh, UK. She then returned to Institut Curie, Paris, to complete her training as a pediatric oncologist, including also additional training in intensive care. She became involved translational research early on in her training. In 2004, she obtained a PhD in Olivier Delattre's laboratory (INSERM U830, Genetics and Biology of Cancer, Institut Curie, Paris). Since 2004, she holds a position as a phycisian-scientist at Institut Curie, where she has been working both as a pediatrician and in the Laboratoire INSERM U830 ( Director: Olivier Delattre) with activities strongly involving both clinical and translational research.
In addition to a broad activity in patient care, she is actively involved in clinical trials at Institut Curie at a national and international level. She is also involved in personal and precision medicine approaches at a national level, as co-PI of the Mappyacts trial (PI : Birgit Geoerger, I Gustave Roussy, France) which aims at performing whole exome sequencing and RNAseq on an on purpose biopsy obtained at relapse in order to identify predictive biomarkers and to orient towards targeted treatment approaches according to the molecular characteristics in high risk pediatric relapsed cancer. A recent national study MICCHADO (PI Gudrun Schleiermacher, coPI Claudia Pasqualini) aims at molecular and immunological chacarterization of high risk pediatric cancer at diagnosis an during treatment and follow-up.
She became team leader of the RTOP team (Recherche Translational en Oncologie Pédiatrique, Laboratoire « Gilles Thomas », a translational research team created withi the SIRIC (Integrated Cancer Research Center of Institut Curie) in 2012. Her main contributions to translational research concern the active contribution to the discovery and characterization of activating ALK mutations in neuroblastoma. Furthermore the discovery of the correlation between an overall genomic copy number profile and outcome has led to treatment stratification based on a genomic copy number in particular in low risk neuroblastoma patients as for instance in the current European LINES protocol. Her work has led to the identification of accumulation of new genetic events such as segmental chromosome alterations, or ALK mutations, at neuroblastoma relapse. Further studies focus on clonal evolution based on next generation sequencing techniques. Ongoing work aims at further study of molecular mechanisms involved in neuroblastoma progression, based also on more detailed biomarker studies using liquid biopsies and on single cell analysis of neuroblastoma.
She is particularly interested in the integration of circulating tumor DNA studies for the study of clonal evolution. Future aims are to integrate both prognostic and predictive biomarkers into integrative treatment approaches for high risk pediatric cancer patients, while working towards a better understanding of the underlying genetic and epigenetic modifications involved in the oncogenesis and tumor progression of this disease.
A founding member of SIOPEN, Gudrun Schleiermacher has been member of the SIOPEN executive committee since 2012. She is currently chair of the SIOPEN biology group, aiming to implement molecular diagnostics and translational research in SIOPEN protocols for patients with neuroblastoma. She is also chair of the French neuroblastoma study committee, and is currently president of ANR. She is representative of the Translational Research Steering Committee within the SIOPEN Executive Committee.
Loredana Amoroso
Loredana Amoroso is a pediatric oncologist whose main interest is neuroblastoma, and in particular early clinical trials and precision medicine.
After her medical studies and board certification in Pediatrics in Rome, she completed her fellowship in Pediatric Oncology at the Institute Gustave Roussy in Paris.
Since 2012, she holds a permanent position as a physician at the Institute Giannina Gaslini where she is involved in clinical and translational research.
She was the Italian country representative within the SIOPEN executive committee and will continue until end of 2024.
Sabine Sarnacki
Sabine Sarnacki is Professor of Pediatric Surgery, head of the Department of Pediatric Surgery in Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, Paris, France. She is involved in pediatric oncology since more than 20 years with a particular interest in neuroblastoma. She is leading the surgeon committee of the SIOPEN (International Society of Paediatric Oncology European Neuroblastoma) since 8 years and is country representative of France within the SIOPEN Executive Committee. She was also member of the IPSO EC from 2015 to 2019. She is an expert at the National Cancer Institute for Pediatric Oncology Surgery questions. She was Vice President of the second French National Rare Disease Plan in charge of health questions from 2011 to 2016 and is leading a national reference center on rare colorectal diseases. She has a long experience of research in transplantation immunology and enteric nervous system development. She was involved for 15 years in the National Master of Surgical Research and was the Scientific Director of the Parisian School of Surgery for the last 12 years.
Sabine Sarnacki is currently the head of the IMAG2 laboratory (http://www.imag2.org/) associated to the Imagine Institute (https://www.institutimagine.org/en/) and dedicated to computational anatomy in pediatric tumoral and developmental diseases. This project is associated to a robotic pediatric program initiated 4 years ago. She was the French country representative within the SIOPEN executive committee and will continue until end of 2024.
Thorsten Simon
Thorsten Simon is associate professor of pediatrics since 2011 and clinical director of the department of pediatric oncology and hematology of the University of Cologne since 2014. After training in general pediatrics, he completed his pediatric oncology/hematology training at the University of Cologne in 2006. His special interest is clinical research in neuroblastoma. He joined the German neuroblastoma research group in 1998 and was actively involved in the national clinical trials NB97 and NB2004. More recently, he was member of the protocol-writing group of the HR-NBL2/SIOPEN trial. He is currently the national coordinator of the SIOPEN registry of peripheral neuroblastic tumours presenting with spinal canal involvement for Germany, chair of the German neuroblastoma registry NB2016, principal investigator of the German NB2015-LR trial for low and intermediate risk neuroblastoma, member of the SIOPEN clinical trial committee. He was the German country representative within the SIOPEN executive committee and will continue until end of 2025.
Sabine Taschner-Mandl
Sabine Taschner-Mandl, PhD, has been head of the Tumor Biology group at St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute (Vienna Austria) since 2018, where she has been working scientifically since 2008. Taschner-Mandl completed her studies of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Vienna. This was followed by a PhD thesis and a post-doc position at the Institute of Immunology at the Medical University of Vienna. Taschner-Mandl was a visiting scientist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, within the EC-FP7 Marie Curie Program. For her research, Taschner-Mandl has received national and international grants, among others from the Vienna Science, Research and Technology Fund, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency and the European Commission. Her research focuses on translational pediatric cancer research, precision oncology and innovative diagnostics. The researcher is a member of international professional societies and working groups (SIOPEN, ITCC, INRG) and currently serves as co-chair of the SIOPEN Biology Speciality Committee. With new molecular biomarkers gaining importance in clinical decision making, quality in molecular diagnostics, harmonization of reporting across borders and continuous research on pathological mechanisms underlying neuroblastoma are her specific areas of interest.
She was one of the six representatives of the lesser recruiting country within the SIOPEN Executive Committee and will continue within this function until end of 2025.
Maja Česen Mazič
Maja Česen Mazič is a pediatric oncologist at Pediatric Oncology/Hematology Department, University Children's Hospital Ljubljana, Slovenia.
She is a certified pediatrician and holds subspeciality in pediatric hematology/oncology.
Her clinical interests are in solid tumors and very rare tumors in children.
She is leading high risk neuroblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma and non- rhabdomyosarcoma soft tissue sarcoma trials in Slovenia.
As an active member of the ExPERT group, she is participating in the PARTNER project guidelines for very rare tumours.
Beside being a member of SIOPEN, EpSSG (European soft tissue sarcoma group), ExPERT (European Cooperative Study Group for Pediatric rare tumors), she is a president of Slovenian Society of Pediatric Oncology/Hematology.
Currently she is finishing her PhD on secondary malignant neoplasms in childhood cancer survivors.
She was one of the six representatives of the lesser recruiting country within the SIOPEN Executive Committee and will continue within this function until end of 2025.
Vassilios Papadakis
Dr Vassilios Papadakis obtained his MD degree with summa cum laude in 1986 from the University of Athens. He completed Residency in Pediatrics (1987-1990) at St Luke’s/ Roosevelt Medical Center of the Columbia University of Physicians and Surgeons and full Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology- Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and NYH Cornell Medical Center (1990-1993, NYC) and spent the following year as Special Fellow in Bone Marrow Transplantation (BMT) at MSKCC. Research activities involved the pathophysiology of bone marrow engraftment and failure following BMT, CNS tumor megatherapy/ transplantation and late effects of cancer treatment.
He then returned to Greece and since 1997, he was appointed at the Department of Pediatric Hematology – Oncology at Agia Sofia Children’s Hospital in Athens, Greece, where he is still working, as Director NHS. A PhD Degree has been obtained from the Medical School of the University of Crete, examining the long term outcome of growth, development and gonadal function in children treated for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Dr Vassilios Papadakis is Board Certified in 1. Pediatrics and in 2. Pediatric Hematology Oncology in the USA and holds the Specialty Title of 3. Pediatrics and 4. Hematology in Greece. Current research interest involves the treatment of Neuroblastoma, Leukemias, Lymphomas and Histiocytic Syndromes in children. Clinical practice involves the full spectrum of Pediatric Hematology – Oncology.
Dr. Papadakis is member of the SIOPEN European Neuroblastoma consortium and has served at the SIOPEN Executive Committee (2006-2000, 2012- 2016, 2020-present). Also, he has helped to create and is leading the Quality of Life- Long Term Outcome Committee of SIOPEN and has active participation in the LINES and HR-1 and HR-2 SIOPEN Protocols. He is a member of Hellenic and International Scientific Committees and Board Member of the Hellenic Society of Pediatric Hematology – Oncology (HeSPHO), where he leads the National Neuroblastoma and Histiocytoses Groups. He also enjoys being a member of the Board (Medical Doctor) of the Make--A Wish Foundation Greece.
He is the treasurer within the SIOPEN Executive Committee.
Irene Jiménez
Dr Irene Jiménez has started her training in pediatric oncology in 2011 at the Institut Curie, in Paris. She has first worked for 5 years in the Department of Pediatric Oncology, leaded by Jean Michon. During these years she decided to focus in Neuroblastoma and started her PhD in 2016 in the Laboratory of Translational Research in Pediatric Oncology of the Institut Curie, under the direction of Gudrun Schleiermacher. During her PhD, she worked in molecular biology of neuroblastoma, more specifically in clonal evolution under targeted therapies. She was also involved in molecular studies in ctDNA. In 2021, she returned to her hometown, Murcia, in Spain, to work as a clinician in the Department of Pediatric Oncology. She is member of the SIOPEN executive board as the representative of Spain until end of 2026.
Toby Trahair
Toby Trahair is a senior staff specialist in paediatric & haematology and oncology at the Kids Cancer Centre, Sydney Children’s Hospital, a translational researcher at the Children’s Cancer Institute and conjoint lecturer at the University of New South Wales. Toby completed his medical degree at the University of Sydney in 1994 and subsequent specialist clinical training as paediatric haematologist, oncologist and & stem cell transplant physician in 2004. Toby’s clinical training has been complemented by PhD studies at the Children’s Medical Research Institute, University of Sydney (1996-1999) and post-doctoral studies at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (2005-06) and the Children’s Cancer Institute (2006-08). Since 2006, Toby has practised as a consultant paediatric oncologist and undertaken translational research with colleagues at the Children’s Cancer Institute. Toby’s clinical and research interests include clinical trials for children with neuroblastoma, developing patient derived xenograft neuroblastoma models, personalised medicine for children with cancer and molecular monitoring for children’s cancers including leukaemia, neuroblastoma and other solid tumours. He is one of the six representatives of the lesser recruiting country within the SIOPEN Executive Committee until end of 2026.
Juliet Gray
Professor Juliet Gray is a Paediatric Oncologist at the Centre for Cancer Immunology, University of Southampton. She is the clinical lead of the Southampton Paediatric Oncology unit and also leads a translational research group focused on novel antibody immunotherapies for neuroblastoma, including preclinical evaluation of novel combinational therapies as well as early phase clinical trials. Her specific research interests include anti-GD2 and immunomodulatory antibodies, such as those targeting PD-1. She leads a number of immunotherapy clinical trials, including the MINIVAN trial, a transatlantic phase I trial, combining targeted radiation therapy and two immune therapies (131-I MIBG, Nivolumab and dinutuximab beta) for the treatment of children with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma. Professor Gray is Chair of the UK Neuroblastoma group and SIOPEN Clinical Trials Committee and is co-chair of the SIOPEN Immunotherapy committee. She is representative of the Clinical Trials Committee within the SIOPEN Exectuve Committee from 2024 on.
Annemieke Littooij
Dr. Annemieke Littooij is senior consultant pediatric radiology at University Medical Center Utrecht and the Princess Maxima Center for pediatric oncology in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She obtained her board certificate radiology in Utrecht, followed by 2 years of clinical experience in KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Singapore and fellowship pediatric radiology in Great Ormond Street Hospital London, UK. Her clinical and scientific interests are in the field of imaging in pediatric abdominal tumors, nationally as well as internationally. In her thesis and in her current role as PI she has been involved in the majority of scientific studies describing the role of MRI and DWI in pediatric renal tumors. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the SIOPE imaging working group, chair of the SIOPEN radiology committee and active member of the SIOP-RTSG and the oncology taskforce of the ESPR. She is representative of the Local Control Group within the SIOPEN Exectuve Committee from 2024 on.
Leona Knox
Leona Knox is Head of Research at Solving Kids’ Cancer UK, a non-profit organisation driving international collaboration to speed up pioneering clinical research that could improve outcomes for children. Leona’s son Oscar died of neuroblastoma in 2014 following extensive therapy in the UK and US. She is a passionate advocate dedicated to multi-stakeholder working for the benefit of children with cancer. Leona is founding Chair of the SIOPEN Advocate Committee and participates in several other academic committees to help change policy and inform research agendas for the benefit of children with cancer, including the Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer (ITCC) Advocate Committee, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Pediatric Cancer Working Group Steering Committee, and the ACCELERATE Steering Committee. She is the patient advocate representative within the SIOPEN Executive Committee.
