Roberto Iacovelli is a n Associate Professor at Catholic University of Sacred Heart of Rome and medical oncologist at Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCC in Rome, Italy. He studied medicine at the “Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy. At the same University, he specialized in medical oncology and had the PhD in molecular medicine and human pathology with a focus in genitourinary cancers. His research activities have a focus on metastatic renal cell carcinoma, prostate and bladder cancer. His major interest is in predictive and prognostic factors in GU cancers as well as the sequence of therapy in renal cancer and the new combination of therapies in GU tumours. He participated as PI or sub-investigator in many sponsored and academic clinical trials and he published more than 220 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and several abstracts at international conferences on these topics. Prof Iacovelli served as PI or CoPI for more than 50 clinical phase I to IV clinical trials. In the last years, despite the pandemic difficulties, he also led some non-profit multicentre national trials which investigated the personalization of therapies for cancer patients especially the use of immunotherapy in metastatic urothelial cancer patients not eligible for cisplatin (NCT03891238) whose results have been orally presented at ASCO GU meeting in 2022 and already published (PMID 35926813), or the use of bladder sparing strategy for those affected by localized bladder cancer (NCT05203913, enrolment ongoing). Renal cancer has always been one of the major topics of interest and he is now leading three studies aiming to evaluate the possibility to personalize the CPI-based combinations. Among these, the TIDE-A trial (NCT04698213) investigated the deintensification of the axitinib-avelumab combination which results have been presented at last 2023 European Society of Medical Oncology
(ESMO) Conference in an oral session and now published on Eur Urology. The other trials aiming to evaluate the intensification of immuno-based therapy in mRCC (NCT05817903) or the role of anti-PD1 pembrolizumab as perioperative therapy for oligometastatic patients eligible for surgery or ablative RT (NCT05578664), highlighting his interest in combination of ablative techniques and immunotherapy. These two last
studies started at the beginning of 2023 and are now enrolling patients in more than 20 centres in Italy. Lastly, a large randomized trials is (April 2025) enrolling about 400 patients in more than 30 centres in Italy to investigate the role of surgery or RT on primary tumor in patients with advanced disease while they are receiving immunotherapy-based combinations (NCT06903312).