Stefan Sleijfer, MD, PhD, was born in Groningen, The Netherlands, where he studied Medicine at the State University and graduated in 1996. He achieved his PhD at the same university in 1997 with the thesis “Clinical and Laboratory Studies on Chemo-Resistance and Sensitivity and the Role of TNF”. He did the residency in Internal Medicine from 1998 to 2004 and from 2002 to 2004 the residency in Medical Oncology at the Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

At the Erasmus MC he has since been a staff member of the Department of Medical Oncology; since 2008 a research co-ordinator in Cancer Genomics and Proteonomics, since 2011 as full professor in Medical Oncology and since 2013 as Head of the Department of Medical Oncology.

Prof Sleijfer is an active member of several scientific Societies, among which: chair of the Centre for Personalised Cancer Treatment (CPCT), Chair of Committee “Development and Implementation” of the Dutch Cancer Society, and Chair of the “route Personalized Medicine” of the Dutch Science Agenda advising the Dutch government for research funding. He is a Member of ASCO and ESMO and ESMO Faculty Member for Sarcoma.

Prof Sleijfer has been involved in the scientific organisation of several conferences and workshops. He is the former scientific director of the ECCO-AACR-EORTC-ESMO Workshop on Methods in Clinical Cancer Research (MCCR workshop). He is section editor “Sarcoma, Endocrine and other Rare Tumours” for the European Journal of Cancer.

His research topics focus on: Translational Oncology - Establishment of prognostic and predictive markers in solid malignancies in particular circulating tumour cells, cell-free DNA and circulating endothelial cells.

He has authored and co-authored over 275 publications and has given over 100 presentations.