Zielinski, Christoph

Central European Cooperative Oncology Group

Prof. Christoph C. Zielinski is currently President of the Central European Cooperative Oncology Group (CECOG; www.cecog.org) and Director of the Central European Cancer Center at Wiener Privatklinik in Vienna, Austria.

From 2001 to 2017 he was Director of the Clinical Division of Oncology, from 2004 to 2017 Director of the Department of Medicine I, from 2010 to 2017 Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center of the Medical University Vienna and from 2017 to 2020 Director of the Vienna Cancer Center, Vienna, Austria.

The Central European Cooperative Oncology Group (www.cecog.org) is conducting widely published clinical trials and educational activities in 23 countries of Central and Southeastern Europe involving env. 150 cancer institutions in the area. CECOG has launched the Governmental International Affairs (GOIA) initiative which is aiming at the amelioration of cancer care in Central and Southeastern Europe. For this, CECOG has generated a Cancer Dashboard which is being discussed with members of the European Parliament and of the Commission.

Prof. Zielinski completed his medical training at the University Hospital Vienna, and began his career with a position as a research fellow at the Cancer Research Center at Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts. In 1992, he became full professor of Clinical Immunology and Medical Oncology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna, Austria.

Prof. Zielinski’s recent clinical research activities cover a wide range of cancer therapies with particular focus on clinical trials, breast and lung cancer research and treatment, experimental targeted treatment and immunotherapies. He has published >630 original papers and reviews in peer-reviewed journals and books, has an h-index of 72. His publications have been cited more than 23.000 times.

In 2013, Professor Zielinski received an honorary doctorate degree from Titu Maiorescu University in Bucharest, Romania, and is an honorary member of the Polish Society for Oncology (2016). He is a member of the European Society for Medical Oncology, and served on the Executive Board and as chair of the Fellowships and Awards Committee from 2014–2017. Since 2019, Prof. Zielinski is member of the ESMO Council and since 2016, Editor in Chief of the internet-only open access peer review journal “ESMO Open – Cancer Horizons” (esmoopen.bmj.com; recent initial IF 5.3).

Prof Zielinski is also a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research.