Carmelo Rizzari is a Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy and has been involved in the field of paediatric leukaemias with a special interest in both traditional and innovative chemotherapy agents. He is currently running the Paediatric Haematology-Oncology Unit in Monza (MBBM Foundation, ASST Monza, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy), which is one of the largest centres for the diagnosis and treatment of haematological malignancies in Italy.
Since the start of his career, he has been involved in the field of paediatric leukaemias with a special interest in both traditional and innovative chemotherapy agents.
He is currently Chairman of the AIEOP (Associazione Italiana di Ematologia ed Oncologia Pediatrica) Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) Committee which aims to improve the knowledge and treatment of childhood ALL in the country. He is also a member of the national AIEOP scientific committees for first-line and relapsed trials for ALL and AML and an active member of several scientific and steering international committees (e.g. AIEOP-BFM ALL trials, International BFM Study Group, ITCC, INTREALL). Within the ITCC Consortium (Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer), he served as a member of the Quality and Accreditation Committee and is currently the Chair of the ITCC Centre of Monza, Italy.
For several years now, he is also serving as the representative of the International BFM Study Group at ENPREMA (European Network for Paediatric Research at EMA) which aims to foster and integrate at the European level the research and innovation in different paediatric areas.
He is also currently national PI or Co-PI or local site PI for several national or international phase I and II Pharma sponsored or Academia driven studies involving innovative drugs for resistant/relapsed leukaemias and lymphomas.
Author or co-author of over 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications, he has also actively participated as an invited speaker in several international scientific meetings and disease-specific working groups.
As of January 2022, he is President of the European Society for Paediatric Oncology (SIOP Europe, or SIOPE). He previously served as Co-Chair of the SIOP Europe Clinical Research Council, which gathers the thirty-five National Paediatric Haematology-Oncology Societies and the nineteen European Clinical Trial Groups.