Riccardo Lencioni joined Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Miami, USA, as director of Interventional Oncology Research from the University of Pisa in Italy, where he was a professor at the School of Medicine. Lencioni is an accomplished interventional oncologist, particularly well-known for his influential work on liver cancer.
“I am delighted to join the group brought together by Govindarajan Narayanan,” said Lencioni, who will also be professor of clinical radiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “The interventional oncology programme at Sylvester is known worldwide for the use of innovative technologies and the outstanding contributions to the development of this new branch of medicine.”
In the mid-2000s, Lencioni and colleagues published a vision statement that is widely considered the birth of interventional oncology.
With the advent of molecular-targeted agents in cancer treatment, Lencioni has been focusing on potential synergies between these novel therapeutic options and interventional techniques. He has been the principal investigator of the two largest clinical trials assessing the benefit of innovative regimens. He was also part of the research group that showed, for the first time, that a genetically-engineered virus injected directly into a tumour has the potential to improve survival in cancer patients.
Lencioni has been the chairman of the European and the World Conference of Interventional Oncology. He has authored more than 190 articles in peer-reviewed international journals and numerous chapters in textbooks on interventional radiology, gastroenterology, oncology and surgery. In addition, he has been the editor of nine books, including Embolization therapy: principles and clinical applications,” just published in 2015.
