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What projects are you involved in?

Currently I am involved in a large retrospective registry study of mesothelioma patients treated at the the University health network since 2006 with a mina focus on systemic treatment in these patients. Also I am working on a study with the International Lung Cancer Consortium (ILCCO) to build a clinical model to account for EGFR-status in large epidemiological datasets where this important variable is often missing.

 

I have seen before that you worked on research about if breathonomics being a predictor of immunotherapy response. What did you find out? 

We have designed a prospective observational study to assess predictive value of bertahomics for patients receiving immunotherapy. We started enrolling in february 2020, however unfirtunately because of the COBVUID19 panmdemic the study is on hold since then and we cannot report any relevant findings yet.

 

What other research have you done?

In Switzerland I worked on several database projects asking questions on patterns of progression onh immunotherapy and targeted treatment in lung cancer. Also I was involved in a large collaborative effort to evaluate response to platinum treatment in molecularly selected patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer.

 

What is it like to be a doctor in Switzerland?

In Switzerland I was working as junior staff in a tertiary oncology center and my main focus were patients with thoracic and genitourinary cancers. Mostly I was seeing patient in the outpatient setting but on a rotating schedule I was also responsible for the inpatient oncology wards. As I was only working four days a week I also had some time outside of the hospital to spend time with my daughter and pursue non-medical interests. In research collaboration is everything in Switzerland as we are a small country and have to work together to get reasonable number of patients to answer interesting questions.

 

What future projects would you like to be involved in?

   Im am looking forward to being involved in a biomarker project analysing blood samples of mesothelioma patients at various timepoints.