News
Welcome back to the ACADI Newsletter! The team has been working hard over the past few weeks and we are happy to share some updates with you.
Publications
Dr Sophie Pilleron has co-authored a paper on strengthening interprofessional and interdisciplinary collaboration in geriatric oncology initiatives based on a World Café of researchers and clinicians at the SIOG 2024 conference in Montreal. This work has now been published in the Journal of Geriatric Oncology. To read more, use this link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879406825000542?via%3Dihub
Dr Pilleron has also co-authored a protocol for an umbrella review evaluating the efficacy of digital health solutions in supporting cancer survivorship care. You can read this work here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0322100
In addition, Dr Sophie Pilleron was executive editor for a special issue on cancer in the oldest old for the journal Cancer Epidemiology – this special edition has now been finished and accepted. Watch this space for further updates on the publication of this special edition.
Grants
Dr Sophie Pilleron was awarded the RESCOM grant by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) to host a series of lectures on Causal Inference methods for real-world data. As real-world data is complex and prone to bias, making robust methodology crucial to ensure reliable causal inference. This series, therefore, provides researchers across disciplines with the tools they need to find real cause-and-effect relationships in today’s complex data landscape. This lecture series will be co-hosted at LIH, LISER, and the University of Luxembourg, showcasing a series of world-renowned experts such as Prof. Miguel Hernán, Dr Peter Tennant, Dr Julia Rohrer, Dr Georgia Tomova and more! This promises to be an exciting and enriching lecture series, and we hope to see many of you there.
Dr India Pinker and Dr Sophie Pilleron were also awarded funding from ThinkPink Luxembourg! Thanks to their generous funding, ACADI will explore how to best to support cancer treatment decision-making in Luxembourg. This project, through a survey and World Café, will gather the perspectives of older patients, their caregivers, family, and healthcare professionals to understand what they feel needs more attention in research and ensure that future endeavours better serve this community. This person-centred approach ensures that future studies will address the real-world concerns and priorities of those most affected by cancer treatment decisions.
Team Mentions
The team has received some attention recently, namely Dr Sophie Pilleron, who was interviewed for and mentioned in a piece in The Lancet Oncology! You can read the piece and Dr Pilleron’s additions here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(25)00274-8/fulltext
A recently published paper, led by Dr India Pinker, which explored the representation of older adults in cancer care guidelines across Europe has been featured in a Press Release from LIH and shared through other press platforms such as Independent Living and Oncodaily. You can read the release here: https://www.lih.lu/en/article/older-adults-overlooked-in-cancer-guidelines-across-europe/
Conference Submissions
The team has been busy preparing to disseminate their research and has submitted four abstracts for consideration at the upcoming SIOG 2025 conference, to be held in Ghent this November. Dr Pauline Duquenne, Dr Clémence Bafei, Dr Sophie Pilleron, and Gladys Langue aim to present their most recent findings on behalf of the group. In addition, Dr India Pinker will speak on qualitative research in Geriatric Oncology as part of a methodology-focused session at the conference.
Collaborative workshop
Ornela Tchomkem, an intern in our team, hosted two collaborative workshops to build a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) to reflect on variables that may influence physical activity at 70 years or older and variables that influence a breast cancer diagnosis within a 5-year period to best examine the causal relationship between physical activity and breast cancer diagnoses in older adults. These workshops generated engaging and interactive discussions with researchers across multiple disciplines.
Invited talks
From the 21st to the 25th of April, Dr India Pinker was invited to speak and host workshops at the Universities of Aberdeen and St Andrews in Scotland, United Kingdom. The first workshop, hosted in the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Aberdeen, was delivered to PhD students in the field of Medical Education, to cover the process of doing a PhD in the field as well as what career trajectories look like for topics in this area. There were productive discussions and problem-solving discussions with many great ideas shared. It points to an exciting future of research in this area!
At the University of St Andrews, in the School of Medicine, Dr Pinker hosted a talk about her research and developments in the fields of healthcare communication and medical education to the Medical Education Division. This division was the group in which Dr Pinker completed her PhD. This session also allowed for productive discussion and potential collaboration. We look forward to seeing where this collaboration will lead.
Journal Club
The monthly journal club has continued with strong attendance and engaging discussions. In April, Dr Berta Portugal presented work examining how compositional data may be analysed in the context of causal inference using a paper entitled “A causal inference perspective on the analysis of compositional data”. Most recently, in May, Dr Pauline Duquenne from our team examined the methodological issues in predictive modelling research to encourage discussion on best methodological practices using a paper entitled: “A predictive model for early death in elderly colorectal cancer patients: a population-based study.”
You can read the articles presented below:
Compositional Data: https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/49/4/1307/5802547
Predictive Model: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38173840/ If you’d like to know more about the monthly journal club, please get in touch with Dr Bafei at clemence.bafei@lih.lu
Until next time, keep well!
The ACADI Team