Ines Vaz-Luis

I am currently a senior oncologist heading the breast-cancer survivorship research group of an INSERM unit at the internationally renowned Gustave Roussy Institute and Medical Centre (IGR) in France. My principal focus is on developing better and personalised all-round care (survivorship care) for women with breast cancer. I have MD and PhD qualifications from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and MSc from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) at the Harvard Medical School (HMS). After qualifying as an MD, in Portugal in 2003 and specialising in oncology, my early key achievements were to obtain a Career Development Award from the Harvard Medical School (HMS)-Portugal programme (2011); to obtain a MSc (2013); to be appointed as an HMS Instructor at the DFCI/HMS (2014) and obtain a PhD (2017). At DCMI/HMS (2011–2016), I significantly extended my expertise and collaborative network in outcomes and quality of care (QoC) research in oncology, by participating in the running of clinical trials and translational studies. By 2016, I had established myself as a scientifically independent researcher in survivorship care and had built strong links with other groups at HMS/DFCI, and at University of California (Los Angeles, USA), MSKCC (USA), the European Institute of Oncology (IEO, Italy), University of Genova (Italy), Oncoclinicas (Brazil) and University of Lisbon (Portugal). Examples of these collaborations concerned (i) optimization/ simplification of partners of care; (ii) collaboration to create research infrastructures, inluding re-aggregation of clinical data in the Portuguese registry to identify patterns of breast-cancer care quality ; and (iii) the implementation and/or design and of clinical trials, notably, in a phase 2 trial of trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and eribulin for patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer; in a phase 2 trial of preoperative cisplatin vs. paclitaxel in patients with triple-negative breast cancer; and in phase 2 trial of eribulin mesylate with or without pembrolizumab for metastatic hormone receptor positive (HR+) breast cancer. In joining IGR in late 2016, I became the leader of an independently funded research programme, which also formed one of IGR’s strategical axes. This programme combines several distinct approaches; (i) quantitative analyses of existing datasets to understand individual risks of long-term complications after cancer treatment; (ii) qualitative analyses to better understand stakeholders’ preferences and barriers to future interventions; and (iii) interventional analyses primarily structured around clinical trials focused on personalizing breast cancer survivorship (five currently funded). My team includes 15 researchers/clinicians, and has active collaborations with more than 100 others at IGR, and direct national and international collaborations involving over 400 researchers. I also lead several national efforts focused on quality of life (QOL) in cancer: the scientific development of the CANTO cohort (NCT01993498; as co-chair); the development of the French digital platform, weSHARE/ESR-EquipEx+. I serve several scientific international committees for ASCO, EBCC, ESMO, and ESO; and I serve as executive board member for BIG. In 2021 given the solution-oriented nature of our research, we co-founded Resilience Care, an online platform to support personalised care in oncology and have established several industrial collaborations (FabrX, Little Green Pharma, Therapanacea, BCG gamma, Kiplin, and WeCare@Work). My team has already contributed to (i) the better understanding of clinical-behavioural and biological determinants of long-term and late effects of treatment-related toxicities in cancer and (ii) how to implement strategies for mitigating side effects including personalised interventions.