Background
I am a minimally invasive and robotic thoracic surgeon with international experience across Italy and United Kingdom.
I have worked in United Kingdom since October 2010 when I fully registered on the GMC specialist register for cardiothoracic surgery. I was recognised with Fellowship of Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) of London in 2013. I graduated with a PhD in Oncology and Genetics in 2015 at University of Siena, Italy. I have worked as a consultant thoracic surgeon in the United Kingdom since April 2014 and at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust as permanent consultant since February 2017.
I have contributed to streamline patients’ pathways to improve their care and I was awarded with a Clinical Excellence Award by Manchester University NHS Trust in June 2019. I am the Clinical Lead thoracic surgeon and the Trust Training Specialty Lead for thoracic surgery, Audit and Clinical Governance Deputy Lead, Medical Student Experience Lead and Foundation Programme Educational Supervisor for Manchester University NHS Trust.
Research
To date, I have published 27 peer-reviewed articles and several abstracts. My research interests include thoracic oncology, minimally invasive techniques, and the application of new technology in Thoracic Surgery.
In 2014, I graduated with a PhD in oncology and Genetics at the University of Siena. My research was focused on Thymic tumours.
In 2019, I was a co-founding member of the North West Thoracic Surgical Collaborative (NWTSC). NWTSC is the largest thoracic surgical UK research collaborative and has joined Liverpool and Manchester research database. NWTSC ambition is to produce high quality research to improve lung cancer outcomes in the region.
In December 2021, I was appointed as responsible clinician for Wythenshawe NWTSC and Chairman of NWTSC steering committee, NCORR.
NWTSC has produced several abstracts accepted at SCTS meetings from 2020 to 2022 as well as numerous original articles accepted for publication on peer reviewed journals. NWTCS aims to generate nationally and internationally validated risk-predictor models for patients undergoing lung cancer surgery.
I am an active member of TRACERx consortium. TRACERx is a major collaboration between experts from a wide range of disciplines working together to integrate clinical, histopathological and genomic data from patients with NSCLC. Taking place over nine years and involving 842 patients from up to 20 hospitals across the UK, the study aims to define how cancer clonal heterogeneity affects the risk of recurrence and survival, and how cancer subclones compete, adapt, and evolve from diagnosis to relapse. In turn this will define how analysis of intratumour heterogeneity can inform patient stratification and the development of novel targeted and immune based therapies. TRACERx patients, whose cancer comes back, can enter clinical trials of novel therapies (depending on test results of their tissue samples) from which they could benefit.
I contribute to several ongoing national Trials: Mesotrap: RCT of palliative surgery vs IPC for mesothelioma – lead investigator. Achilles ATX-TBL-001: collection of donor tissue/ blood from patients with malignancy to enable development of Neo-Antigen Reactive T-Cell therapies – co-investigator (CI). Topic2: RCT to investigate the effectiveness of Thoracic Epidural/ Paravertebral Blockade in reducing chronic post-thoracotomy pain – CI
Harp2: Multicentre RCT- prevention of postoperative complications by using HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitor in patients undergoing one lung ventilation – CI. Tracer X: tracking NSCLC evolution through therapy – CI.
I also contributed to 100,000 Genomes Project. It aims to: use Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) to identify novel driver mutations for cancer and to understand its evolutionary genetic architecture through primary and secondary malignant disease; partner stratified healthcare programmes and outcome studies with patients from the NHS in England to enable understanding of WGS benefits in defining predictors of therapeutic response to cancer therapies; to utilise WGS to identify new pathways for cancer therapies.