Jacobus Pfisterer

Jacobus Pfisterer, MD, PhD is Professor of Gynecology and Director of the Gynecologic Oncology Center at Kiel, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, and is one of the most influential figures in the surgical and clinical management of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer in Europe. He served as Scientific Director of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Gynäkologische Onkologie (AGO) Study Group — one of Europe's leading gynecologic oncology cooperative groups — and led landmark clinical trials that have fundamentally shaped surgical and medical management of ovarian cancer. Most prominently, Dr. Pfisterer was the lead investigator of the LION (Lymphadenectomy in Ovarian Neoplasms) trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019. LION was a paradigm-shifting phase III randomized trial demonstrating that systematic pelvic and para-aortic lymphadenectomy in patients with advanced ovarian cancer who achieved complete macroscopic cytoreduction and had clinically normal lymph nodes did not improve overall survival but significantly increased operative time, blood loss, and postoperative morbidity. This landmark finding overturned decades of surgical dogma and immediately removed routine lymphadenectomy from ovarian cancer debulking in major international guidelines. Beyond LION, Dr. Pfisterer has led clinical trials of first-line chemotherapy combinations including carboplatin/paclitaxel optimization, intraperitoneal chemotherapy, and PARP inhibitor maintenance strategies in ovarian cancer. His work on identifying optimal surgical endpoints and timing of interval debulking surgery following neoadjuvant chemotherapy continues to define perioperative management standards for this disease.