The Department of Medical Oncology and Hematology, led by Professor Armando Santoro, focuses on diagnostics and treatment of various cancerous and hematological diseases and treats over 16,000 patients annually.

The Department includes four specialized sections:

• The Centre for the development and application of biological therapies in oncology, which specializes in experimental therapies with anti-EGF (Iressa) in lung cancers, gastrointestinal cancers and low malignancy sarcomas; anti-angiogenic therapies for lung cancer; biological medicines for the treatment of prostate and kidney tumors; and monoclonal antibody therapies in lymphomas and breast and lung cancer.
• The Center for diagnostics and treatment of hematological neoplasms, with particular focus on non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Hodgkin’s disease, acute and chronic leukemia and multiple myeloma;
• The Center for high-dose therapy, which in addition to developing innovative ways for applying anti-cancerous drug dosages in myeloablative therapy with autologous stem cell support, also conducts a program for allogeneic bone marrow transplantation with non-myeloablative therapy.
• The Center for diagnostics and treatment of sarcomas and rare cancers, which manages clinical trials for neoplastic diseases such as rare soft tissue sarcomas, mesotheliomas, thymomas, medullary thyroid carcinomas and skin rashes. The center aims to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of new therapeutic strategies, chemotherapy combinations and new drugs against these diseases;

The Department also performs various types of stem cell transplants, including adult-to-adult transplant, umbilical cord blood transplant, and haploidentical stem cell transplant.

The Department of Medical Oncology and Hematology aims to ensure that each patient receives high quality diagnostics and treatment of all neoplastic diseases, while conducting a vast range of both clinical and basic research for the development of innovative treatments. In particular, the team focuses on the implementation of innovative therapeutic approaches for high incidence tumors, the so called “big killers”, such as breast cancer, lung cancer, and gastroenterological cancer.