Prof. Joachim Aerts
Head of Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Erasmus MC Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Joachim Aerts is head of the department of Pulmonary Medicine at the Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam since 2018. His main research focus is on fundamental, translational and clinical research in immuno oncology, with a strong focus on lung cancer and mesothelioma. As PI and as co-investigator, prof. Aerts is has led numerous studies on these subjects.
Prof. Aerts is member of the board of directors of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). He is a frequent invited speaker on international conferences, and he is scientific committee member of multiple national and international societies, such as the NVALT, EORTC, ASCO, ESMO, ETOP, AACR, ERS and ATS. Prof. Aerts is co-author of >250 articles in international peer reviewed scientific journals.
Dr. Roberto Ferrara
Medical Oncologist & Academic Translational Researcher
San Raffaele Scientific Institute and University of Milan, Italy
Roberto Ferrara is a Medical Oncologist and academic translational researcher at San Raffaele Scientific Institute and University in Milan. He got an academic diploma in cancer research in Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus (Villejuif, France) where he worked as clinical fellow from 2016 to 2018. In 2018 he moved to National Cancer Institute in Milan where he started a PhD in Molecular Immunology and in 2023 he moved to San Raffaele Scientific Institute and University as academic researcher. His primary research interests regard atypical pattern of progression to immunotherapy in lung cancer patients and biomarkers of primary and acquired resistance to immunecheckpoint inhibitors. In 2018, Dr. Ferrara coordinated a large multicentric retrospective study which described for the first time hyperprogressive disease upon immunotherapy in lung cancer patients and in 2021 he identified circulating T-cell senescence as a novel predictive biomarker of progression upon immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer patients. For his research works, Dr. Ferrara has been awarded with the ASCO Merit Award in 2019, the IASLC Young Investigator Award in 2019, the SITC World Immunotherapy Council Award in 2021 and the AACR-Pezcoller Foundation Award in 2023. In 2024, Dr. Ferrara was awarded from AIRC (Italian Association for Cancer Research) for the study “Hyperbolic”, the first randomized trial focused on hyperprogressive disease in lung cancer patients. Dr. Ferrara is member of several scientific societies, panelist for the Italian society of medical oncology (AIOM) Lung Cancer Guideline Committee, ESMO faculty member for non-metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and other thoracic malignancies Committee, extended member of ESMO-Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Working Group. Dr. Ferrara is author of more than 130 scientific articles on international highly impacted journal (Scopus H index 35, 131 documents, 6573 citations).