Professor of Medical Oncology at NKI and ErasmusMC;
Head of Department of Medical Oncology at NKI;
Groupleader AYA and Sarcoma Research at NKI
Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Netherlands
Professor Winette van der Graaf, with a PhD on ‘Circumvention of Multidrug Resistance in Cancer’ at the University of Groningen, is head of the department of Medical Oncology and Group Leader in the Netherlands Cancer Institute Amsterdam since 2018 and holds her chair in transformative Medical Oncology at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Between 2008-2015 she worked as professor of Medical Oncology at Radboudumc Nijmegen, and led the department from 2010 until her departure to the UK. From 2015-2018 she was Teamleader clinical and translational Sarcoma research at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and consultant in the Sarcoma unit of The Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
She raised and chairs the Dutch AYA ‘Young and Cancer’ network. In recent years together with dr. Olga Husson, she obtained several large grants on AYA cancer research from the Netherlands Cancer Foundation (KWF): COMPRAYA to study risk factors on long term (poor) outcome of cancer and treatment at AYA age and together with Hartwig Medical Foundation GENAYA to study WGS in AYA cancer patients. In 2022 the European project STRONGAYA from EU HORIZON was obtained to design and use a Core Outcome Set to enable healthcare system improvements for AYA cancer patients in different countries across Europe and support research in this field.
In the NKI she is also member of a multidisciplinary lab research group in Sarcoma. She has published over 580 papers and is supervisor of PhD students working in sarcoma, rare cancers, AYA cancer and patient involvement.
She was chair of the EORTC Soft Tissue and Bone Sarcoma Group from 2011-2014. She is president of the EORTC Board since February 2022. She is board member of the European Cancer Organisation and board member of CTOS, member of the ESMO Sarcoma faculty and chairs the Dutch Sarcoma Group.