Meeting with Professor Schöffski in Leuven

Back in June of this year Ellie, John and Chris went by Eurostar to Brussels in order to meet Professor Patrick Schöffski.

Professor Patrick Schöffski is the head of the Department of General Medical Oncology at the University Hospital Leuven and also leads the Laboratory of Experimental Oncology at Leuven University in Belgium. 

Patrick is one of the few scientists in the world that have undertaken research into Clear Cell Sarcoma (CCS). We were very warmly welcomed by Patrick who kindly gave over 2 hrs. of his valuable time and we had an interesting conversation around CCS and afterwards he showed us around the oncology wards at Leuven’s Hospital, where over 300 out-patients a day are treated with chemotherapy.

Patrick has collected over 20 samples of CCS cells, which he is prepared to share with other researchers around the world. Patrick is keen that practitioners and researchers in Sarcoma should communicate their ideas and share their knowledge and to this end has set up a forum, in collaboration with the University of Essen, called FORTRESS.

The first meeting of FORTRESS had a break out session on CCS which proved useful and the second meeting of FORTRESS is planned to be held in Essen in January 2020 and representatives of Ed’s Foundation have been invited to attend and are looking forward to the event.