Franco Locatelli is Head of the Department of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology and Cell and Gene Therapy at the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, in Rome, Italy.
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. 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. His current main research interests are CAR T cells for both B-cell malignancies, brain neoplasia solid tumors (neuroblastoma) and B-cell mediated autoimmune diseases, T cells genetically modified with a suicide gene to accelerate immune recovery after allogeneic cell transplantation and gene therapy/genome editing for hemoglobinopathies.
He is the author or co-author of 1.537 peer-reviewed articles published in international journals (including New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Nature Medicine, 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, Clinical Cancer Research, Leukemia) with more than 80.000 citations and he has an H-index of 135 (Scopus source).
From February 2019 to March 2025, he served as President of the Higher Council of Health (Consiglio Superiore di Sanità). In December 2021, he was awarded the title of Knight Grand Cross (Cavaliere di Gran Croce) by the President of the Italian Republic.
