MCCR Alumni Club
Who are we?
The MCCR Alumni Club (MAC), formerly Flims Alumni Club, is a non-profit organisation established in 2001. The MCCR Alumni Club responds to the interests and needs of highly driven European junior clinical oncologists by offering an expanding range of benefits exclusive to its members.
MAC membership is free, and open solely to young professionals and faculty who participated in the EORTC-ESMO-AACR Workshop on Methods in Clinical Cancer Research. After seventeen editions (1999-2015) occurring in Flims, Switzerland, the MCCR Workshop relocated to the Netherlands – firstly to Zeist, and now to Sint-Michielsgestel.
Vision, Mission and Objectives
Vision
Every cancer patient receives the best treatment and care through innovation.
Mission
To foster and nurture early career investigators by providing a platform for best practice and knowledge exchange for clinical and translational research in cancer.
Objectives
- To foster the active involvement of early career investigators in clinical and translational research.
- To promote the teaching, study and dissemination of methods in cancer research, and thus contribute to increase the quality of clinical trials and translational research.
- To ensure and encourage multidisciplinarity and collaboration across all stakeholders in investigator initiated clinical and translational cancer research.
- To establish a platform (for alumni) for educational exchanges, practical methods, support and advice in clinical and translational research throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
Membership
MAC membership is free, and open exclusively to young professionals and faculty who participated in the EORTC-ESMO-AACR Workshop on Methods in Clinical Cancer Research.
Responding to the interests and needs of highly driven European junior clinical oncologists, the MAC offers a broad and expanding range of benefits exclusive to members:
- Exclusive access to the MAC Members Directory
- Direct networking opportunity via the MAC LinkedIn Group
- Receiving information on upcoming educational webinars and future meetings for members and faculty
- Receiving updates on a variety of opportunities including research, travel and educational grants, as well as fellowship / post-doc positions
- Receiving information on important conference and meeting deadlines, such as abstract submission, as well as details surrounding upcoming events in oncology
To further serve the upcoming generation of experts in cancer treatment, care and practice, the MAC is striving to set up additional initiatives.
If you have any other queries related to MAC, please contact us at mac@eortc.org.
MAC Steering Committee
Magdalena Meissner
(President)
Marina Milic
(President-elect)
Pierluigi Bonomo
(Past President)
Daniela Morales-Espinosa
(Treasurer)
Renske Altena
(Secretary General)
Giuseppe Lamberti
(Member)
Alberto Puccini
(Member)
Mariela Vasileva-Slaveva
(Member)
Daniela Morales-Espinosa
The Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop was an inflexion point in my career. Since my early years, I was inclined to both basic and clinical research. As most oncologists, I looked forward to participating in clinical trials or referring my patients to offer them the best possible treatment options.
During my early years in medicine, I witnessed the incredible power of having clinical trials available that would change patients’ lives. I saw patients with conditions that would make them suffer the little time they had, benefit of new treatments that would help them improve their quality of life and offer them the possibility to increase their survival span.
I am a medical oncologist, born and raised in Mexico, and I did a fellowship in Lung Cancer and Translational Research in Barcelona with support from ESMO and IASLC. During that time, I set up the clinical trials unit in the facility I was working at and was its Medical Director and internal Medical Monitor. I also obtained a Master’s Degree in Clinical Trial Design and Analysis from the University of Barcelona. I am part of the class of 2016 (Zeist), and aside from meeting a group of extraordinary people, I finally understood we still have a lot of work to do with regard to clinical trials. A year after the MCCR workshop, I decided to pursue a different career. I started to work at a CRO, where my last position was Senior Medical Manager for Oncology; I also collaborate with a molecular diagnostic laboratory. Since July 2021 I am working as Medical Director at a Biotech company.
As clinicians, there is a time when you can get easily confused in the grey area between clinical practice and clinical research. One thing that might be leading to that is that clinical trials need to be well designed, considering the patients and physicians’ real needs. A flawed designed study is not only bad for the industry/research group; it can be really damaging to the patients. They may lose the opportunity to benefit from a new treatment that will not be approved due to a bad design.
As members of the MAC steering committee, we should promote workshops/webinars with people from CROs and Industry. The relationship between these two with the investigators is crucial. In my opinion, it is essential to make communication between these groups as seamless as possible. This could lead to further cooperation and contribute to better and more interesting clinical trials. These webinars should focus on innovative study designs and analyse the results of the most recent studies. Also, case studies where we portrait the story of some treatments across their early and late phase / registration studies, pointing out the success cases and refer to those where phase II results were not reproduced in phase Ill and take them as a learning opportunity. In addition, we should use social media to communicate with the new generations of researchers. This offers a great opportunity for the MCCR Alumni Club to connect with them.
Giuseppe Lamberti
My name is Giuseppe Lamberti, and I am a Medical Oncologist and PhD student in Medical Oncology at the University of Bologna School of Medicine, in Italy. I was born in 1988 in Salerno, in Southern Italy, and got a MD degree from University of Naples “Federico II” and then received my training in Medical Oncology at the University of Bologna School of Medicine, which I completed in 2019. I spent the last year of my training as a visiting research fellow at Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston (US) with research projects involving predictive factors of response to immunotherapy in NSCLC and SCLC. After my training, I joined the University of Bologna PhD programme, with a main focus on immunotherapy in SCLC and neuroendocrine tumors. I actively participated in the design of and carried out many investigator-initiated clinical trials and authored or co-authored over 40 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
In 2018, thanks to my supervisor Professor Andrea Ardizzoni, I attended the 20th Methods in Clinical Cancer Research workshop held in Zeist (NL), and was amazed by the passion and competence I found in both the faculty and other attendees. I also acknowledged that networking with people who took part in the workshop was an invaluable resource for every independent investigator who is planning to design a trial aiming at significantly improving care of patients with cancer. This is the reason why I promptly showed my interest in helping to reshape and restructure the “MCCR Workshop Alumni Club”, when I was given the opportunity, and now, as a natural consequence, I am happy to serve on the MCCR Alumni ClubSteering Committee. I believe that the Club has some remarkable strengths: a focus on methods of designing and developing investigator-initiated clinical trials, a highly competent and committed faculty, extremely motivated Alumni, and the link with the Workshop and the EORTC. In my vision, the Alumni Club should first of all increase its visibility and members’ awareness with a short presentation at each Workshop and at main oncology meetings to detail its activity and resources. Among these resources, I think it is of primary importance to provide an interactive platform for Alumni to look for help and suggestion from other members and from available faculty members, and to host useful documents or website links. Furthermore, it would be of great help setting up a network of support for young investigators designing their trials with information about how to get funded for a trial (e.g., apply for a grant or to highlight funding opportunities), and to provide a sort of “Club Endorsement” as a “quality mark” recognized by Industry and major Associations.
Marina Milic
I am a Medical Oncologist currently completing my PhD in Immuno-radiotherapy in Lung Cancer at Gustave Roussy Institute. I have done so far my specialty training in London at University College Hospital and will be seeking to practice and maintain close links between the two countries. I have a particular interest in clinical trial design and development and have taken part in the EORTC course in 2019 finding it an amazing and valuable experience for every young oncologist.
If given the opportunity, I would support more international collaborations and national promotion of the course within our trainees. Similarly development of partnerships with national specialty and medical organizations is paramount and I believe we can achieve successful promotion via those routes. I also believe additional working seminars can be developed for follow-up, training or networking in subjects relevant to clinical trials which would bear reasonable fees and give CPD credits. During ESMO congresses, an informal networking event could be organized to catch up with alumnus and recruit young oncologists similar to ESMO Young Oncologists events. Those are only a few ideas indeed, and I am open to work with my fellow colleagues in a collaborative and efficient manner in order to give the MCCR Alumni Club new perspectives.
Magdalena Meissner
I am a Cancer Research UK Clinical trial fellow at the Centre for Trials Research at Cardiff University, UK. I completed my medical oncology training early this year and obtained funding from the Welsh Cancer Research Centre for my current clinical research fellowship based at the early phase clinical trials unit in Velindre Cancer Centre. I have also recently completed my PhD, titled ‘Investigation of Biomarker Determinants of Treatment Response of Fulvestrant and the Akt Inhibitor in Oestrogen Receptor Positive Breast Cancer’, in Professor Rachel Butler’s laboratory in Cardiff, UK.
I have experience in early phase trials and lab-based translational research within the context of a clinical trial. My PhD involved studying circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) as a biomarker of response/resistance to treatment in ER-positive breast cancer within the context of phase II clinical trial (FAKTION). This project has given me a unique opportunity to be involved in complex areas around ethics, consent, processing and analysis of translational samples from clinical trials.
Since I became a Cancer Research UK Clinical trial fellow, I have led the development of a proposed multi-drug and two-part phase II trial for soft tissue sarcomas. I have created a team of national UK collaborators: consisting of clinician scientist, surgeon and medical oncologist specialising in sarcoma. I am aware of ongoing challenges in the engagement of the pharmacological companies regarding access to anti-cancer agents required for the trial in rare cancers.
I personally led on the development of a randomised two-stage Phase II Study of STAT3 inhibitor with immunotherapy in pre-treated patients with soft tissue sarcoma. The trial idea was accepted for, and developed at, Methods in Clinical Cancer Research (MCCR) workshop in Zeist, Netherlands, in June 2018. This workshop offered an unrivalled opportunity to be mentored by world-leading experts in the field of cancer clinical trials. This experience allowed me to improve my knowledge and undertake high-quality cancer research in the future. This gave me a valuable opportunity to acquire intensive, in-depth experience of clinical trial methodology. Meeting with senior clinical trialists in sarcoma and with well-respected methodologists, helped me network to promote future collaborations, for high quality international trials. This very important aspect has particular value for trials in very heterogeneous and rare diseases like sarcoma, where collaborations with other centres are crucial. After the workshop, I felt that there was a lack of structured support within the MCCR Alumni Club (MAC), and I want to change this for future MAC members.
I have been recently involved in developing a branding strategy and defining new activates for a new MAC. Now, I would like to continue my involvement in the development of future MAC as a member of the MAC Steering Committee. I believe that MAC would play a significant role in future clinical research.
I want MAC to be involved in the ongoing development of the new trial ideas beyond the MCCR workshop and increase the number of successfully completed clinical trials derived from the workshop. This can be achieved by establishing an ongoing partnership and mentorship between faculty and MAC members through a mixture of virtual and face-to-face, regular MAC meetings. MAC would continue to offer access to world-class experts, share experiences with novel trial designs, advise on methodology, and translational research experts to include biomarker analysis early in clinical trial designs. MAC could operate in 3 or more teams with a specific area of expertise such as methodology, industry engagement, novel trial designs. New MAC member will have access to each team at the time that is most needed for a specific stage of trial development.
I believe MAC could help create new international clinical trial ideas and help develop highly skilled future trialists through ongoing support and global networking within the MAC community. MAC can lead as an example in the excellence of clinical trials and be recognised worldwide. This could help achieve an improved way of delivering high-quality clinical trials more effectively and efficiently to accelerate clinical research and achieve better outcomes for cancer patients. This is especially important in rare cancers as there is a noticeable lack of progress in patient’s outcomes and where novel and more efficient clinical trials are mostly needed.
Alberto Puccini
I am currently completing my fourth year of Medical Oncology Fellowship at the University of Genoa, Italy, mentored by Professor Alberto Sobrero. Since my third year of Med School, I have been interested and involved in clinical research activities. Indeed, since March 2013, I have taken part in a Supplementary research training programme at the University of Genoa, focused on Oncology and mentored by Professor Alberto Sobrero at the University of Genoa Hospital with the aim to learn and delve into the world of clinical research.
As a direct consequence of this research training programme, I was able to attend a 1-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at Professor Heinz-Josef Lenz’s Lab at Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. During this period, I was involved in several translational and clinical research studies which allowed me to have a strong background to develop my own projects; in addition, I acquired experience to collaborate with national and international colleagues, and I expanded considerably my knowledge in gastrointestinal cancer research, which may be considered as my main focus, especially colorectal and pancreatic cancer.
I have attended the 21st EORTC-ESMO-ECCO-AACR Workshop on Methods in Clinical Cancer Research in June 2019 because of the valuable scholarly resources and well-known reputation of the highly qualified training in clinical research of the workshop. Since the beginning of my career as a researcher and medical scientist, I perceived the need of international early-career groups in order to have educational interchanges, support and advice in clinical and translational research.
Attending the MCCR workshop and international meeting (e.g., ASCO and ESMO conferences), I had the feeling that several collaborations among brilliant early-carrier researchers should be encouraged and facilitated through a common platform of ideas and projects exchange.
For these reasons, I would be honoured to be part of the FLIMS Alumni Steering Committee with the scope of promote translational and clinical cancer research among Young investigatorss.
My aim would be to build a strong platform, different from the existing ones (e.g. ESMO Young Oncologists), to provide practical help and advice to early-career Oncologists to develop and accomplish their own projects, with focus on clinical trials. With the help of the renowned faculty members of the MCCR Workshop, we could support the progress of clinical studies from the early phase, to research funding, collaborations and the fulfilment of the project.
As a special added value, I perceive this as an extraordinary opportunity to interact with participants and scholars from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, to have a stimulating horizontal exchange of experience. This type of networking is undoubtedly very important for the integration of different ideas and perspectives pertaining to diverse issues. Moreover, I strongly believe that being part of FLIMS Alumni Steering Committee would not only be an exceptional and unique occasion as a channel for my personal development, but it will also enrich my future studies and give me the framework to broaden my horizon, strengthen my abilities and utilize my full potentials.
I would also like to point out that I am determined to make the most out of this opportunity, as it will hopefully pay off for years to come. At the same time, I am fully aware of the possible challenges and high investments of effort I will have to place in order to successfully work as a team with the other members of the group and sustain active participation.
Mariela Vasileva-Slaveva
Currently, I work as a specialist in General surgery at the Breast Surgery Clinic of University Hospital Acibadem City Clinic Sofia, Bulgaria and I am the secretary of the “Women for oncology – Bulgaria“ society.
I have always been interested in research. In 2016 I finished my PhD on a translational research project regarding breast cancer. As part of this, I participated in the establishment of the breast cancer biobank at the Medical University Sofia. The next year – 2017 –my hospital was equipped with a facility for intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) in breast cancer patients and I had the opportunity to be part of the team involved in introducing this new technique into practice. As I wanted this technique to be more widely adopted and accessible for patients I was thinking for a way to extend its application. The same year I had the chance to attend ECCO congress in Amsterdam, where I attended a half-day event introducing and promoting the MCCR workshop. I was impressed by the speakers, the former participants and the work they had done. There I started thinking on how I could participate in this workshop.
Performing a clinical trial in surgery is very hard, especially in a country and institution that has no history in surgical research. Nevertheless, I succeeded in creating a proposal for a clinical trial, which could extend the criteria for the application of the IORT in early breast cancer patients. Up to this moment the MCCR workshop has been the most valuable research experience in my career. At the time of my MCCR – the 19th edition – I was the third Bulgarian ever to attend the workshop. Later on, I found the other two and I have to say that they both are very special doctors with unique knowledge and I have learned a lot from them. One of them is the most famous professor in radiation oncology in Bulgaria and the other is a medical oncologist, with whom we established the “Women for oncology-Bulgaria” society. In this society we aim to improve education of both doctors and patients, to promote research, and finally, to improve patient’s care.
The MCCR workshop gave me one more unique chance. My mentor in the group –Prof. Emiel Rutgers, invited me to spend some time at his department at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. I took this opportunity and in 2018 I spent one month there as an ESSO fellow.
All these opportunities gave me so much and I am very grateful. But it was not easy and I got a lot of help and support for every step of the way. I want more Bulgarians and more people from Eastern Europe, more people without institutional support to have the chance to attend the MCCR workshop, to have an access to this specific and high-level knowledge and experience, which I can say was life-changing for me. For people from institutions with no tradition in clinical research to prepare for the Workshop is very hard. Afterwards, the actual conducting of the trial, in my opinion – quite impossible. In order to improve this, promoting the MCCR is much needed, but not enough. The networking after the MCCR workshop is essential.
In my experience surgeons are one of the hardest doctors to convince to change their practice and this is particularly true in Eastern Europe. That is why they really need a whole new perspective that clinical research is giving. Inviting and promoting the MCCR workshop among young surgeons and young oncologists in Bulgaria is one mission that I have already, and which I will extend as a member of the steering committee.
The MCCR workshop should not be a single event in our lives. Developing a platform for education, support and advice for alumni club members is the most valuable opportunity. Even if the protocol I created during the workshop will most probably never be used, the knowledge I gained regarding clinical trial design, and the people I met in relation to the MCCR workshop have already given me a lot.
Finally, some insights from the MCCR workshop should be accessible for people, who cannot participate in the workshop for some reason. This can help them to apply or just enrich their knowledge.
Currently, I work in a private hospital, which as well as the other hospitals in Bulgaria, has no history of research in surgery and very little tradition in research in general. This I definitely would like to change and I am changing it already.
Renske Altena
I work as a medical oncologist at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and am clinically involved in care for patients with breast cancer and endocrine tumours. In addition to my clinical work am I involved in various research projects, with a common goal to improve systemic therapies by means of more refined patient selection as well as to obtain an augmented understanding of the scope and causes of cancer treatment-related morbidity in young women. Currently I am co- supervisor to three PhD-students and I have supervised a number of master students. I greatly enjoy interdisciplinary collaborations, and strongly believe that local and international teamwork is a way to proceed in our common goal of improving prospects for patients diagnosed with cancer.
Participating in the ESMO MCCR has for me, as for many others, been a very career-defining moment. During this week I learnt that there are so many more people who share my passion and ambitions, and I think this unifying factor is also the most important basis to focus on in the future plans for the FAC. With our common ambition as a unifying ground, we could create a community of alumni that can provide a network for both horizontal and vertical connections where we can share experience, construct mentee-mentor couples and enable discussions and collaborations in research projects – both in terms of organizational and scientific content. My believe is that a strong online community, both through an open channel as well as a secluded member-only environment, can be a basis for building out his concept. In addition, when the Covid-19 pandemic allows, this could be extended to physical meetings at the large international conferences in order to strengthen personal relationships, recruit new members and have educational, inspirational sessions. I believe we should position ourselves as a complement to other groups for young professionals, where scientific content and research collaborations is the factor that defines us.
Pierluigi Bonomo
Dr Pierluigi Bonomo, MD, is a radiation oncologist at the Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Careggi, University of Florence, Florence – Italy. After finishing his residency program at the Policlinico Gemelli – Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Rome) in 2009, he attended the 12th ECCO – AACR – EORTC – ESMO Workshop on Methods in Clinical Cancer Research. Eventually, he spent two years working as clinical oncologist in palliative care unit at Centro di Ricerche e Formazione ad alta tecnologia nelle scienze biomediche “Giovanni Paolo II”, Campobasso – Italy. From 2011 to 2013, he worked at the Istituto Fiorentino di Cura ed Assistenza, Cyberknife Center, Florence. Since 2013, he’s been working at Careggi Hospital in Florence, where he is Head and Neck Cancer Tumor Board coordinator and GI consultant. Between 2016 and 2017, he was visiting clinician scientist at the Radiation Oncology department, “Eberhard Karls” University, Tuebingen – Germany, focusing on biologic and imaging predictive biomarkers of treatment response.
Since 2011, he’s been an active member of the Flims Alumni Club steering committee. From March 2018 to March 2021, he served as FAC president. Pierluigi is a member of ASCO, ESTRO, EORTC and MASCC. His main areas of interest are clinical research in head and neck and gastrointestinal cancers focusing on combined personalised chemo-radiation strategies, hypofractionated, high precision radiotherapy and supportive care. He has authored or co-authored over 115 original articles, with a predominant emphasis on head and neck cancer.