Caroline Weibull
Statistician
About me
I am a biostatistician with over 10 years of experience working in register-based epidemiological research. My main research interests include reproductive epidemiology and cancer patient survival, with a particular focus on survivorship and methods for multistate modelling. I work in the Cancer Epidemiology Group at the Clinical Epidemiology Division. Currently, I split my time between lymphoma research, and maintaining and conducting research within the database CRCBaSe (Colorectal Cancer database Sweden).
Research description
PhD work
I defended my PhD thesis "Survivorship in Hodgkin lymphoma: Childbearing and treatment-related disease" in 2018. My main supervisor was professor Paul Dickman and my co-supervisors were professor Magnus Björkholm, professor Paul Lambert, docent Sandra Eloranta and docent Ingrid Glimelius. The four papers published as part of my PhD were:
- Pregnancy and the risk of relapse in patients diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma (J Clin Oncol, 2016)
- Contemporarily treated patients with Hodgkin lymphoma have childbearing potential in line with matched comparators (J Clin Oncol, 2018)
- Temporal trends in treatment-related incidence of diseases of the circulatory system among Hodgkin lymphoma patients (Int J Cancer, 2019)
- A multistate model incorporating estimation of excess hazards and multiple time scales (Stat Med, 2021)
Current work
My work in lymphoma focuses on follicular lymphoma (FL) and mantle-cell lymphoma (MCL), and is conducted in collaboration with senior lecturer Karin Ekström Smedby and docent Ingrid Glimelius.
Within FL, we are currently concluding a large data collection covering all geographical regions in Sweden. Based on this unique data, we will investigate timing of progression of disease (POD) and its impact on prognosis, as well as describe patterns and changes in immuno- and chemotherapy over successive treatment lines.
In the MCL projects that I work in, our main focus is to identify groups of patients who are not selected for aggressive treatment (i.e., autologous stem-cell transplantation), and how that affects prognosis, in an unselected cohort of patients. We are also studying short- and long-term treatment side effects in this cohort.
I also work extensively in colorectal cancer research. This work centers on CRCBaSe, a database for clinical epidemiological research on colorectal cancer. CRCBaSe is based on the Swedish quality of care register for colorectal cancer (SCRCR), and has been linked to several population-based registers in Sweden. As a member of the steering group, my role is to maintain the database and be the senior statistician in CRCBaSe related research projects. This work is done in collaboration with professor Anna Martling and docent Caroline Nordenvall.
Alongside my applied research, I conduct statistical methods development in the field of multistate models, with a focus on how to incorporate multiple time scales. This can be of interest either as a means of relaxing the Markov assumption, or in the more general case where more than one time scale needs to be taken into account.
Teaching portfolio
PhD supervision
Anna Nikkarinen is registered at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Experimental and Clinical Oncology, Uppsala University, since 2019. Anna is an MD and her thesis is on Mantle cell lymphoma with a focus on biology and targeted treatments.
Mehrnoosh Shahrivar is an MD and surgeon and initiated her graduate studies in 2020 at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery (KI). The aim of her thesis is to analyze the colorectal cancer genetic profile, in combination with aspirin use, and its impact on prognosis and treatment. Mehrnoosh will be utilizing data from CRCBaSe as well as from the ongoing ALASCCA (Adjuvant Low Dose Aspirin in Colorectal Cancer) trial.
Joshua Entrop has a Master degree in public health and is studying childbearing after modern-day intensive immuno-chemotherapy in young Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivors. Joshua is registered at the Clinical Epidemiology Division since 2020.
Malin Ljunggren is an MD and is studying patient selection for curative-intended treatments for stage IV colorectal cancer, with special focus on patients with peritoneal metastases (PM). She registered in 2021 at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery (KI).
Education
2018, PhD in Medicine from Karolinska Institutet
2009, MSc in Mathematical Statistics from Stockholm University