The TREL project aims to improve the survival of children with malignant tumours in Lithuania by actively initiating research activities and sharing knowledge with more experienced partners.
One of the project's activities is a placement in partner institutions to improve skills, acquire new knowledge and put it into practice.
Survivorship Passport
On 14-18 March 2022, a group of TREL project participants - Monika Kapitančukė, paediatric onco-haematologist, Audronė Ciesiūnienė and Justas Trinkūnas, IT specialists - visited CINECA (Bologna, Italy) and Istituto Giannina Gaslini (Genova, Italy). The purpose of the visit was to gain knowledge and experience on how the Survivorship Passport implementation process is going on, what difficulties and challenges are encountered and how mistakes can be avoided in the implementation of this passport in Lithuania.
The Survivorship Passport is a digital tool for monitoring childhood cancer survivors. As is well known, the disease itself and its treatment can lead to late effects in as many as 60% of survivors. Monitoring them is therefore crucial to reduce the burden of these complications. VULSK is currently running a parallel project on the implementation of this passport entitled "Study on the development and implementation of the PanCare Digital Survivorship Passport to improve the surveillance of childhood cancer survivors (PanCareSurPass)."
Virtual Tumour Board
It is worth mentioning that during the first quarter of 2022, international multidisciplinary discussions took place, where three patients treated at the Paediatric Onco-haematology Centre were discussed, with the participation of expert physicians from the UKE (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf) and the VULSK paediatric multidisciplinary team.
Worshop
We would like to congratulate the participants of the successful workshop on "Multidisciplinary Workshop on Clinical Trials in Paediatric Oncology", which took place on 26 April 2022. Despite its virtual format, the workshop was very well attended with a total of 72 participants. The workshop consisted of three parts and covered three different topics: paediatric renal tumours, current issues in neuroblastoma research and treatment and paediatric CNS tumours. Presentations were given by 15 speakers from institutions participating in the TREL project: PMC (Netherlands), REGIONH (Denmark), IGR (France), IGG (Italy), UKE (Germany), CCRI (Austria) and VULSK (Lithuania). Experiences, knowledge and perspectives in the field of paediatric cancer treatment were shared. VULKS scientists also had the opportunity to present their work.
Publications
We are very pleased to announce the publication of the first article stemming from the TREL project, published in the BMC Cancer journal, on „Development of a questionnaire to evaluate female fertility care in paediatric oncology, a TREL initiative“, written by a team of authors in collaboration with physicians from VULSK (Lithuania) and PMC (Netherlands). Reference: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-022-09450-2
Additionally, abstracts were accepted for 3 international conferences: the Nordic Paediatric Haematology and Oncology (NOPHO), SIOP International and the Baltic conference.