Clinical implications of guidelines in Sarcoma

Dr Maki is a medical oncologist who has focused for over 20 years to understand tumors arising from connective tissues, which include sarcomas and other aggressive tumors that do not metastasize, such as desmoid tumors. These tumors represent less than 1% of all cancers that happen in adults. I work with patients with these diagnoses to find the right treatment for the 70 or more types of bone and soft tissue sarcomas and other soft tissue tumors. As part of this work, I also reserach new medications for cancer in general, a field called developmental therapeutics. In my research, I seek to find new medications that may be useful for sarcoma patients, and try to figure out why they work or not. I work closely with colleagues at Penn Medicine, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and with other national and international teams of researchers such as SARC, the Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration, to improve the understanding and treatment of sarcomas.

A medical oncologist, Silvia Stacchiotti works in the Adult Mesenchymal and Rare Tumor Medical Treatment Unit, Cancer Medicine Department, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori (INT), Milano, Italy. Dr Silvia Stacchiotti received his medical degree in 1993 in Milan, and trained at the INT. She is board certified in Medical Oncology. She has four children. She is involved in all institutional research activities on adult bone and soft tissue sarcomas (STS), including GIST. This includes neoadjuvant therapies in extremities and retroperitoneal STS, identification of new targets and new anticancer treatments for specific sarcoma types, studies on the immune-profile of sarcomas as well as on mechanisms of resistance to therapy and the development of preclinical models of sarcomas. She collaborates to the Italian Network on Rare Tumors. She is particularly dedicated to ultra-rare sarcomas, among which chordoma, chondrosarcoma, giant cell tumor of the bone, extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma, alveolar soft part sarcoma, clear cell sarcoma, dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans, solitary fibrous tumor, PEComa, vascular tumors, epithelioid sarcoma, desmoid tumor, tenosynovial giant cell tumor. She is the Principal Investigator of several Italian and International trials on sarcomas. She is the current president of the Italian Sarcoma Group (ISG). She is the faculty coordinator of the Sarcoma track of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and the subject editor of the ESMO guidelines committee for sarcoma and GIST. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society (CTOS). She is included in the list of European Medical Agency (EMA) external experts. She is the chair of the systemic therapy subcommittee of the EORTC Soft Tissue and Bone Sarcoma Group. She collaborates with several sarcoma Patients Advocacy Groups, among which the Chordoma Foundation, the Desmoid Tumor Research Foundation, the EHE Foundation, in which she serves as a member of the respective medical advisory boards. She has authored more than 200 scientific publications. She serves on the editorial board of European Journal of Cancer and Cancer