Scientific report 2020 of the Paediatric Diseases Working Party (PDWP)

The year 2020 was particularly embossed by the need to switch all meeting to virtual events. Despite these major changes, the PDWP maintained a high number of oral presentations during the annual meeting (eight = identical to the previous year).

The scientific output in 2020 increased further compared to 2019 (IF 86.01) and reached an all-time. The most important publication of this year are the results of the randomized FORUM trial in childhood ALL in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Christina Peters et al, clearly demonstrating the superiority of TBI over chemotherapy-based conditioning. Albeit surprising and disappointing, it is a seminal publication and a paradigm for the power of prospective clinical trials and evidence-based medicine.

Another highlight was the open-access publication of 12 articles plus an Editorial, summarizing the major contributions from the Educational Meeting on Sickle Cell Disease in Regensburg 2019 in a Special Issue Edition of Hematology/Oncology and Stem Cell Therapy.

The PDWP maintains strong links and interacts with the IEWP and the SAAWP resulting in very important collaborations and consensus manuscripts on pediatric issues. With the unequivocal commitment for education the Midterm Focus Meeting on non-malignant diseases, from July 8^th to 10^th, was a huge collaborative success of the PDWP, IEWP and the SAAWP. With 46 speakers and chairs, albeit virtually, it attracted more than 370 attendees from over 40 countries and in particularly the Q&A sessions received an enormous interest from the scientific community.

The Education Program for 2021 foresees new online formats such as educational sessions with expert presentations and case conferences for discussion of complex clinical cases.

Moreover, the Cancer Predisposition Meeting originally planned for 2020, will be held in October 2021.

1. Midterm Focus Meeting on Non-Malignant Diseases - 8-10 July, 2020 / [Virtual].