Board members
Prof. Francesco Bertoni
Scientific Advisory Board
Francesco Bertoni graduated in Medicine and post-graduated in Medical Oncology at the State University of Milan (Italy). He first moved to Switzerland, working with Prof. Emanuele Zucca in the team of Prof. Franco Cavalli in 1995. He then spent periods in London at the Molecular Haematology Unit of the Institute of Child Health in London, in the Department of Oncology of the “Mario Negri” Institute of Pharmacological Research in Milan, Italy, and in the Department of Experimental Haematology of The Barts and The London – Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Since 2003, he has been a group leader and deputy director at the Institute of Oncology Research in Bellinzona, Switzerland. He is an Adjunct Professor at USI (Universita’ della Svizzera italiana), and the current president of the Lymphoma Project Group of the Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research (SAKK). He is also the president of the Local Organizing Committee of the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML) and a research consultant for the Bellinzona Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland (IOSI).
His interests are anti-lymphoma compounds and lymphoma genomics. Bertoni is the author/co-author of over 200 original papers, over 50 editorials/invited reviews, 20 book sections, and several abstracts at meetings.
Prof. Derya Unutmaz
Scientific Advisory Board
Derya Unutmaz, M.D. from Marmara University, held postdoctoral positions at Novartis and NYU before joining Vanderbilt as Assistant Professor. In 2006, he became a tenured professor at NYU. Since 2015, he has been Professor at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine and an affiliated professor at UConn.
With more than 150 publications, multiple patents, nearly 30,000 citations, and an h-index of 74, he has pioneered genetic and functional assays of human immune cells, including early lentiviral vector systems. His laboratory discovered several T-cell subsets, advanced cancer immunotherapies, explored precision medicine for ME/CFS and investigated COVID-19 immunity. Now focuses on immuno-oncology and reversing immune aging.