Dear SIOP Members,

The SIOP Board of Directors recently created the SIOP Epidemiology and Outcomes Network to foster collaboration on epidemiology of childhood cancers, facilitate and form mentorship relationships for young researchers, and establish opportunities for networking, career development, and professional support in the epidemiology field.

We are now happy to announce the first cohort of leaders of the Epidemiology and Outcomes Network, selected by a Selection Committee made of SIOP Board members:

  • Erin Marcotte, Co-Chair
  • Venkatraman Radhakrishnan, Co-Chair
  • Henrike Karim-Kos, Steering Group Member
  • Gabriela Villanueva, Steering Group Member
  • Manuela Orjuela-Grimm, Steering Group Member
  • Dilnasheen Safdar, Steering Group Member
  • Miho Kato, Steering Group Member

Congratulations to our Network leaders!

You can find more about the leaders’ background below. Feel free to reach out to the Network leaders (programs@siop-online.org) or directly through SIOP CONNECT. The leaders are working on designing and offering member activities in the field of epidemiology, which will be advertised through the SIOP Weekly Bulletin and SIOP CONNECT.

Join This Network

You can join this Network and any other SIOP Network/Working Group by logging into SIOP CONNECT, going to GROUP, clicking on the Network/Working Group Name and then clicking on the JOIN button. For detailed guidance, please see this page with SIOP CONNECT Frequently Asked Questions. Once you join, you will start receiving all their communications, including future engagement and networking opportunities.

Warm regards,

SIOP Secretariat

 

Biography of SIOP Epidemiology and Outcomes Network Leaders

Dr. Erin Marcotte is an Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. She graduated from Davidson College before going on to receive a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Los Angele, in 2013, where she focused on environmental risk factors for childhood leukemia and Wilms tumor. She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota with a focus on the genetic and molecular epidemiology of childhood leukemia, hepatoblastoma, and germ cell tumors. Dr. Marcotte’s primary research interests include development of novel methods to detect leukemia translocations in newborn dried blood spots and exploring the mechanisms which underlie racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in both childhood cancer incidence and outcomes. She also leads research on the genetic, molecular, and environmental causes of pediatric leukemia, hepatoblastoma, and NF1-related tumors. Her funded work includes an NIH R01 to examine the socioeconomic determinants of pediatric leukemia outcomes as well as an NIH R01 to characterize the prevalence and determinants of leukemia translocations at birth. Dr. Marcotte is the Vice Chair of the Children’s Oncology Group Epidemiology Committee and has led and participated in several projects through the Childhood Leukemia International Consortium.

Venkatraman Radhakrishnan is a Professor in Medical Oncology and Pediatric Oncology at Cancer Institute (W.I.A), Chennai, India. His professional interests include clinical trials, global health, supportive care, and cancer registry. His research focuses on challenges unique to LMICs.

Henrike Karim-Kos, PhD, is a distinguished cancer epidemiologist with extensive experience in assessing progress in cancer control and evaluating the quality of care using population-based cancer registry data from multiple European countries. She currently holds the position of Principal Investigator for Childhood Cancer Epidemiology and Outcomes at the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology and serves as a Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL).

Gabriela Villanueva MD MS was born in Argentina and attended medical school at the University of Buenos Aires. She moved to the US to complete a residency in Pediatrics at the University of Illinois and a fellowship in Pediatrics Hematology and Oncology at the University of Chicago. As part of her training, Dr. Villanueva also earned a Masters of Science degree in Public Health Sciences for Clinical Professionals at the University of Chicago. She currently works at Hospital de Clínicas José de San Martín, one of Argentina’s leading public hospitals, and one of the few institutions in the country with a dedicated Adolescents and Young Adults (AYA) department. In her current research, Dr. Villanueva leads a project focused on second malignancies in retinoblastoma survivors, as well as a study on early toxicities in AYAs with osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma, along with other AYA-related regional projects.

Manuela Orjuela-Grimm is a molecular epidemiologist and pediatric oncologist whose research focuses on vulnerability (including social) to environmental exposures, gene-nutrient/ environment interactions during windows of susceptibility such as pregnancy, early childhood, adolescence and the development of later genetic and epigenetic changes contributing to poorer health outcomes in childhood and adolescence. She leads EpiRbMx, a long standing case control/ case series study examining exposure to methyl donors, folate pathway metabolism and risk for retinoblastoma in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of investigators including the Hospital Infantil de Mexico, the Hospital de Pediatria at the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (IMSS), the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica (INSP), and the University of Toronto. In collaboration with INSP researchers, Dr Orjuela is involved in multiple studies examining the intersection between food security, folate related dietary intake, dietary diversity and environmental exposures in central Mexico, including in migrants in transit through Mexico, and in recently arrived adolescent migrants in New York.  She has a particular interest in the intersection of pediatric oncology and populations on the move/ displaced populations.

Dilnasheen Safdar is an enthusiastic Oncology/Hematology/BMT Nurse Manager and researcher who aspires to train and educate nurses in Low-middle-income countries. It is her mission to give standard care to Cancer patients and Families. She is a Nursing Director at the National Institute of Blood Disease and BMT (NIBD & BMT) and an active SIOP member. She is working on national and international research projects.

Miho Kato, MD, MPH is a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at the Department of Childhood Cancer Data Management of the Children’s Cancer Center at the National Center for Child Health and Development in Tokyo, Japan, and the Director of the Japan Children’s Cancer Group Data Center for Solid Tumors. She completed her medical education at Kagawa University in Japan, and earned a medical license in Japan and the United States of America. After she engaged in the treatment of childhood cancer as a clinician, she decided to major in data science and earned a Master of Public Health at the St. Luke’s International University Graduate School of Public Health in Tokyo, where she is learning as a Doctor of Public Health candidate. Dr. Kato currently oversees the data management of clinical research on solid tumors including the largest childhood cancer registry with over 9,000 solid tumor cases all over Japan, and especially leads the establishment of a long-term follow-up system in Japan as the central organization for childhood cancer. She also co-manages a Japanese public registry, the Hospital-Based Cancer Registry, with the National Cancer Center, where she analyzes the national data on children and AYA cancer.