speakers Thursday 11 march
Claudio A. Franco
Group Leader at Católica Biomedical Research Centre, Associate Professor at Católica Medical School, Portugal
Sabine Bailly
Dr Sabine Bailly is a director of research at the INSERM Institute (Grenoble, France). She is working on the ALK1 signaling pathway and Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangectasia (HHT). In 2007, her group identified the two high affinity ligands for the endothelial receptors ALK1 and endoglin, which are BMP9 and BMP10. Using Alk1, Bmp9 and Bmp10-knockout mouse models, they showed that circulating BMP9 and BMP10 induce vascular quiescence. Her group is also involved in translational research. They have developed genetic functional tests for ALK1, Endoglin, SMAD4, BMP9 and BMP10 genes mutated in HHT and are involved in several HHT clinical trials with the group of Dr Sophie Dupuis-Girod in Lyon (French HHT reference Center). She is internationally recognized in the field of BMP signaling, vascular remodeling and HHT.
Julien Coulie
Bio
Paloma Triana
Consultant Pediatric Surgeon, Pediatric Plastic Surgery Section and Vascular Anomalies Unit, La Paz Children’s Hospital, Madrid, Spain
Paloma Triana, MD, PhD, is a Consultant Pediatric Surgeon at La Paz University Hospital in Madrid, Spain, with subspecialty expertise in Pediatric Plastic Surgery and Vascular Anomalies. Her clinical and research work focuses on vascular anomalies, congenital malformations, and giant congenital nevi. She has extensive experience in targeted therapies for vascular anomalies, including sirolimus, alpelisib, trametinib, and rebastinib, and has participated as investigator in multiple international clinical trials, including the EPIK and RLY-2608 programs. She obtained her PhD with honours (Cum Laude) in 2023 for her research on sirolimus treatment in vascular anomalies. She founded and currently chairs the Pediatric Vascular Anomalies Committee at La Paz University Hospital. She has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and is a frequent invited speaker at national and international vascular anomalies meetings.
Antoni Riera-Mestre
Head of the Systemic and Vascular Diseases and Aging research Group. IDIBELL; Principal Investigator and Professor of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Riera-Mestre is a committed Internal Medicine specialist. He obtained his PhD in 2012 (University of Barcelona) and a Master in Health Management in 2014 (UIC-Barcelona). He is the Head of the Internal Medicine Department at Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge (Barcelona, Spain).
He has a special interest in rare vascular diseases and cardiovascular diseases, focusing on the clinical management and translational research of Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT). He is the Director of the HHT Unit, Head of the Systemic and Vascular Diseases and Ageing Research Group at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and Principal Investigator within the CIBEROBN research network (Group CB12/03/30012).
He is also Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Universitat de Barcelona. Dr. Riera-Mestre has been the PrincipaI Investigator of 20 clinical trials, published more than 150 original articles indexed in PubMed and supervised six Doctoral Theses specifically focused on HHT.
Laurence Boon
Coordinator of the Centre for Vascular Malformations, Division of Plastic Surgery, Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc (UCLouvain), Brussels, Belgium
Dr. Laurence Boon, MD, PhD, is a Clinical Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at UCLouvain and leads the Multidisciplinary Center for Vascular Anomalies at Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc in Brussels. Specializing in vascular anomalies, she integrates treatment with translational research. Her notable leadership includes roles as Vice President, President, and Past President of the ISSVA, and she currently co-chairs the VASCA Working Group at VASCERN. A member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium since 2015, Dr. Boon leads multinational clinical research, including phase III trials on therapies like sirolimus. Recognized with awards such as the INBEV-Baillet Latour Prize and the Gagna and Van Heck International Prize, she has authored numerous publications, supported by an H-index of 61 (Scopus) and 72 (Google Scholar). Dr. Boon co-founded VASCAPA, advocating for patients, and collaborates with genetics labs to innovate patient care in vascular malformations.