Franco Locatelli

Franco Locatelli is a Full Professor of Pediatrics at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome and Head of the Department of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology and Cell and Gene Therapy, at the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome. He has been the President of the Italian Association for Pediatric Haematology-Oncology AIEOP from 2004 to 2006, and served as chairman of the European EWOG-MDS consortium from 2005 to 2011. Professor Locatelli leads the largest program of allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation in Italy. He is an expert of hematological malignant and non-malignant disorders of childhood. He is the chairperson of the current diagnostic and treatment protocol for children with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia of childhood, and chairs the working group on relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia in Italy. He is chairperson of the international protocol of chemotherapy-free treatment of childhood acute promyelocytic leukemia. During his career, he has provided relevant contributions in the study of childhood leukemia, myelodysplastic syndromes, thalassemia, innate immunity, immune reconstitution after transplantation, tumor immunology, induction of tolerance towards alloantigens and anti-viral cellular immunity. His current main research interests are CAR T cells for both B-cell malignancies, brain neoplasia and solid tumors (neuroblastoma), T cells genetically modified with a suicide gene to accelerate immune recovery after allogeneic cell transplantation and gene therapy/genome editing for hemoglobinopathies. Prof. Locatelli is the author or co-author of over 1.296 peer-reviewed articles published in international journals (including New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, The Lancet, Lancet Haematology, Lancet Oncology, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Blood, Cancer Research, Leukemia, etc.) with more than 57.858 citations and he has an H-index of 116 (Scopus source). Since February 2019 until now, Prof. Locatelli is serving as President of the National Council of Health (Consiglio Superiore di Sanità). On December 2021, he was nominated 1st Class/Knight Grand Cross (Cavaliere di Gran Croce) by the President of the Italian Republic.