Name:
Dr Filippo Pietrantonio
Job Title:
Medical Oncologist
Organisation / Company:
Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori
Biography:
Filippo Pietrantonio is a Medical Oncologist and the Head of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy. He leads a team focused on developing new therapies for gastrointestinal cancers and identifying resistance mechanisms to targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and novel agents. One of his major career accomplishments is the generation of a “school” of oncologists dedicated to translational and clinical research at INT and collaborating with INT researchers and several institutions worldwide. His fellows have constantly attended international institutions during their education/training and are now leading several projects and trials as PIs.
He is Principal Investigator for more than 100 currently active profit and non-profit trials and is Chair or member of the Steering Committee of several national and international clinical trials. He is an author of more than 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals and H-Index of 60 (at the age of 44 years), he sits on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of Fondazione GONO GI (non-profit organization dedicated to the design of non-profit trials), and founder of ENGIC European Collaborative trial network. He is the Editorial Lead of the GI Section of Annals of Oncology. He contributed to the organization on committees for different conferences, including the ESMO Annual Meeting (2024 Upper GI, 2025 as Upper GI Track Chair, 2026 Upper GI), ESMO Asia (2026 GI), and ASCO (Lower GI 2026-2028). He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology from 2021 to 2025 and coordinates the Italian guidelines for esophageal cancer. His main contributions are: 1)Design of > 15 no profit clinical trials aimed at improving the clinical practice for GI cancers, including but not limited to NCT07407465 (CHIMERA, metastatic colorectal cancer), NCT06253650 (TRINITY, early gastric cancer), NCT06037980 (PURITY, early biliary tract cancer), NCT05845450 (UNICORN, early colorectal cancer), NCT05594290 (early Merkel cell carcinoma), NCT05031975 (Eraze-TMZ, colorectal cancer), NCT05136326 (CATARTIC, locally advanced rectal cancer), NCT04689347 (FLIRT-bev, advanced colorectal cancer), NCT03832621 (MAYA, advanced colorectal cancer), NCT02476045 (VALENTINO, advanced colorectal cancer), NCT02934464 (ARMANI, phase III, advanced gastric cancer), NCT02414009 (CAPTEM, advanced colorectal cancer), NCT02086656 (COI-B, advanced colorectal cancer). Some of these trials impacted current clinical guidelines and practice, such as maintenance therapy for metastatic colorectal cancer, treatment algorithms in gastric cancer, including curative immunotherapy, and molecular profiling of GI tumors, identifying novel actionable subgroups, such as POLE mutations and gene fusions. More recently, he focused on the design of window-of-opportunity and neoadjuvant trials in GI tumors, to provide immediate innovation for patients with curable disease and establish platforms for multinational collaborations in translational research. 2)After showing that MSI is a robust prognostic marker in patients with resectable primary gastric cancer (JCO 2019), he designed the first study aimed at demonstrating that organ preservation is possible, feasible and, since 2023, NCCN-guideline recommended in patients with MSI gastric cancer treated with immunotherapy/pharmacological ablation (NCT04817826, INFINITY trial: Raimondi et al Ann Oncol 2025 and planned plenary presentation at AACR 2026 by Leone Alberto Giovanni). 3) He also contributed greatly to identifying the biological bases of resistance to trastuzumab-based therapy for HER2+ gastric cancer, with a great support from the AIRC-funded project “Moving forward from single-agent trastuzumab thanks to a reverse translational approach in HER2+ advanced gastric cancer”. He is now working on assessing resistance mechanisms to the new antibody-drug conjugates within the 2024 AIRC-funded project “Actioning the resistance mechanisms to different antibody-drug conjugates in gastric cancer” 4) He focused on underserved minority studying the role of gender medicine, and cancer in patients at risk of discrimination, such as transgender or HIV+ people (JAMA Oncology 2023).