Head of the Department of Neuroblastoma Genomics at DKFZ and Hopp Children’s Cancer Centre at NCT Heidelberg KiTZ.

Dr. Westermann has worked on the ITCC (Innovative Therapies For Children With Cancer) International Data Integration Platform to prioritize drug development and access for children with cancer. The aim of this project is to take a decisive step towards the systematic prioritization of new cancer therapies for children in Europe and beyond through better use of and access to existing genomic and clinical data.

He has extensive experience in molecularly characterizing childhood cancers, particularly neuroblastoma, and in developing molecular classification systems that are now used in the clinic.

He is member of the clinical sequencing progra “INdividualized Therapy FOr Relapsed Malignancies in Childhood“ (INFORM). The concept of the INFORM registry is to biologically characterize tumor samples (collected through routine standard of care biopsies at the time of the current tumor manifestation) for all pediatric patients with relapsed or refractory high risk disease of the 12 most common but also selected rare entities for whom no further standard of care therapy is available.