Dr. Benjamin Pradere received his MD in the Urology and Oncology Unit of the University Hospital Center of Tours, France. On behalf of the Endourological Society at the Urology Department of Tenon Hospital, he also participated in a one-year clinical and research fellowship under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Olivier Traxer. There, Dr. Pradere worked on the conservative treatment of upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) and the new technology for urothelial carcinoma diagnosis which received several prizes, both nationally (from the French National Academy of Surgery) and internationally (from the American Urological Association [AUA] and the Endourological society). These studies helped him obtain his MSc in 2018.
After two years as a Senior Fellow in the CHU in Tours, France where Dr. Pradere was mainly in charge of stone surgery, endoscopic enucleation of the prostate, and robot-assisted radical cystectomy, he joined the department of urology of the Comprehensive Cancer Center Medical University in Vienna, Austria where he worked with Prof. Shahrokh Shariat. In Vienna, Dr. Pradere began as a research fellow and afterwards, he was in charge of the fellowship programme for research until 2022. He now works at La Croix Du Sud Hospital in Toulouse, France but remains involved in the Urology Department of Vienna for the research fellowship programme.
Since 2016, Dr. Pradere has been the Chairman of the French Association of Young Urologists (AFUF), where he created educational and scientific materials. He provided his expertise and dedication in the executive committee of the AFUF for more than 6 years and helped reshape the educational content for young urologists.
Dr. Pradere is a full-time member of the EAU’s Young Urologists Office (YUO) and in the Urothelial Cancer board of the Young Academic Urology office (YAU).
Since 2015, he is involved as a Junior Associate in the Urological Infection panel for the EAU Guidelines. In 2018, Dr. Pradere started to collaborate with the EAU Guidelines Dissemination Group and helped promote the EAU Guidelines.
In France, he is involved in different national scientific committees such as the Oncology Committee for Bladder Cancer and the Committee for Male LUTS that regularly provide new national clinical guidelines.
Dr. Pradere also contributes to the Urologic Educational Programs and has a position in the French College of Urologic Academics.
At age 35, he already authored and co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, as well as, several book chapters. Dr. Pradere is involved as a reviewer in different national and international most recognised journals in urology. He is annually recognised as an abstract reviewer for the Annual EAU Congresses in the field of bladder cancer.
Dr. Pradere is also an associate editor in the urological journals World Journal of Urology, Progrès en Urology, and Actas urologicas. He was a guest editor for various issues of the journals Current opinion in Urology, Journal of Clinical Medicine, and Cancers and Frontiers in Oncology.
His main areas of interest include urologic oncology with a specific focus on UTUC and bladder cancer.
After being associate editor of the educational platform UROONCO BCa, he is now appointed as the chief editor.
Dr. Laura Mertens is a urologist working at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her main expertise is clinical oncological urology, particularly focusing on bladder cancer, and research on optimising bladder cancer imaging. Her long-term career goal is to improve the outcome of patients with invasive bladder cancer.
To prepare for this career, Dr. Mertens combined medical studies with an international Honours Programme at Maastricht University, for which she completed internships in the UK, Iceland, Belgium, Hungary and Indonesia.
Dr. Mertens’s career in urology started with a PhD in urology/surgical oncology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. Her research, mentored by Prof. Simon Horenblas and Dr. Bas van Rhijn, focused on enhancing imaging and treatment of bladder cancer, including several international collaborations on the value of FDG-PET/CT for preoperative staging.
After her PhD (2014), she followed her clinical training in urology in the Amsterdam region (Amsterdam UMC). Subsequently, Dr. Mertens did a clinical fellowship in oncological urology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (Prof. Henk van der Poel and Dr. Bas van Rhijn). She is involved in the EAU Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Guidelines Panel and the Young Academic Urologists (YAU) Urothelial Cancer Working Group.
Dr. Francesco Del Giudice is a Urologist and PhD student from the Department of Maternal Infant and Urologic Sciences at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He is currently a Research Scholar at the Department of Urology, at Stanford University School of Medicine, CA, USA.
Dr. Del Guidice is also an Associate Member of the “Young Academic Urologists” (YAU) from the European Association of Urology (EAU) in the Urothelial Working Group and also serving as associate editor for the UROONCO Educational Platform from the European Association of Urology (EAU).
His main research focus lies on the study of Urothelial neoplasms especially front the Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinomas (UTUC) and Muscle and Non-muscle Bladder Cancer (MIBC, NMIBC).