Dr. Rosa Villanueva Castillo

Dr. Rosa Villanueva Castillo is a distinguished medical oncologist with over 22 years of experience at the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Neoplásicas (INEN) in Lima — Peru's premier and oldest dedicated national cancer institute, and the referral centre of last resort for the country's most complex oncological cases. Founded in 1952 and affiliated with the Peruvian Ministry of Health, INEN is responsible for diagnosing and treating a substantial proportion of Peru's cancer burden, and it is within this high-volume, resource-conscious environment that Dr. Villanueva Castillo has developed her considerable clinical skills.

She is one of Peru's most experienced specialists in gynaecological oncology and breast cancer, two of the most prevalent cancer categories among Peruvian women. Her career at INEN has brought her face to face with the full epidemiological and social spectrum of cancer in Peru — from patients diagnosed at early, potentially curable stages to those presenting late with advanced metastatic disease, and from patients in Lima's urban core to those who have travelled weeks from remote Amazonian or Andean communities to receive treatment.

Dr. Villanueva Castillo is known for her ability to design evidence-based treatment protocols that are effective within real-world resource constraints — adapting international guidelines such as those from ASCO and ESMO to the Peruvian context where access to some novel agents may be limited, but where clinical expertise and institutional infrastructure allow for excellent outcomes. She has been a consistent advocate within INEN and in public policy discussions for greater equity in cancer care access across Peru's diverse geography.

She is also a respected educator, having supervised and trained dozens of medical oncology residents and fellows at INEN over the course of her career. Her teaching draws on an extraordinary breadth of clinical cases and her deep familiarity with the epidemiological and genetic patterns of cancer in the Peruvian population.

Dr. Villanueva Castillo earned her medical degree (Médico Cirujano) from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru's oldest and most distinguished public university. She subsequently completed her internal medicine residency before pursuing a specialisation in medical oncology at INEN itself, which runs one of the most intensive and comprehensive oncology training programmes in Latin America by virtue of its exceptional case volume and subspecialty breadth.

She completed additional training in gynaecological oncology — a subspecialty with a distinct pharmacological and multidisciplinary management approach — and was exposed to gestational trophoblastic disease management, a condition for which INEN has historically maintained a dedicated treatment programme with outcomes comparable to international reference centres.

Dr. Villanueva Castillo holds board certification in medical oncology from Peru's medical establishment and is a member of the Sociedad Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Oncología Médica (SLACOM) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), participating in continuing education through both organisations' scientific programmes.

Dr. Villanueva Castillo's clinical expertise is centred on the medical management of gynaecological and breast malignancies, with a strong secondary capability across other solid tumours including colorectal cancer. In breast cancer, she manages hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive, and triple-negative subtypes, selecting between endocrine therapies, CDK4/6 inhibitors, HER2-directed biologics, antibody-drug conjugates, and chemotherapy regimens based on tumour biology, staging, and patient fitness.

In gynaecological oncology, she specialises in systemic treatment of cervical cancer (platinum-based chemoradiation followed by adjuvant immunotherapy in selected patients), ovarian cancer (carboplatin and paclitaxel with bevacizumab and/or PARP inhibitors in BRCA-mutated cases), uterine cancer, and gestational trophoblastic disease — a condition in which INEN has developed specialised protocols achieving cure rates in early-stage disease exceeding 95%.

She also manages colorectal and other gastrointestinal tumours, bringing experience with FOLFOX, FOLFIRI, and bevacizumab-containing regimens. Her palliative oncology expertise ensures that symptom management, quality of life, and goals-of-care conversations are integrated into the care of patients with advanced disease from the earliest possible point.

Dr. Villanueva Castillo has contributed to clinical research on gynaecological cancer outcomes within the INEN registry — one of the largest cancer databases in Latin America — including analyses of cervical cancer staging and survival outcomes, ovarian cancer response to platinum-based chemotherapy, and gestational trophoblastic disease outcomes at INEN. She has co-authored publications in regional oncology journals and presented findings at SLACOM's annual congress and at the Pan-American Cancer Congress.

She has also been involved in research examining barriers to timely cancer diagnosis in Peru, including the role of geographic remoteness, healthcare system access, and cultural factors among indigenous Andean and Amazonian communities. This work has contributed to INEN's community outreach strategy and informed Ministry of Health policies on early cancer detection programmes in underserved regions. Her research philosophy is guided by the conviction that improved data collection and analysis of Latin American cancer populations is essential to generating guideline evidence relevant to regional clinical practice.

Dr. Villanueva Castillo consults in Spanish and English and is experienced in evaluating patients from other Latin American countries who seek oncology opinions or treatment at INEN — a referral centre that receives patients from across Peru and occasionally from neighbouring countries including Ecuador, Bolivia, and Colombia for complex gynaecological malignancies and gestational trophoblastic disease.

For international patients exploring treatment options in Peru, Dr. Villanueva Castillo offers telemedicine second-opinion consultations to review pathology, imaging, and prior treatment records. INEN's international patient coordination team can assist with treatment scheduling, translation, and medical documentation. While INEN is primarily a public-sector institution, it also accepts privately funded international patients for specialist consultations and defined treatment programmes, offering access to her expertise at a nationally recognised oncology centre.

Dr. Villanueva Castillo has been recognised by INEN and by the Sociedad Peruana de Oncología Médica (SPOM) for her outstanding contributions to oncology clinical practice and education over more than two decades. She has served on SPOM's board and contributed to the development of national oncology clinical practice guidelines for gynaecological and breast cancers in Peru.

She has received institutional commendation from INEN for her role in training oncology residents and for her leadership of the gynaecological oncology medical treatment programme. Her contributions to gestational trophoblastic disease management at INEN have been cited in regional publications as a model for developing robust subspecialty oncology programmes in resource-variable Latin American settings. She continues to be a sought-after speaker and faculty member at regional oncology educational events.