Professor of Medical Oncology, Director of the Department of Molecular and Clinical Endocrinology and Oncology, Università di Napoli Federico II. He has spent several years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, USA. He is a member of several national and international scientific societies and has served as president of the Italian Society of Medical Oncology (AIOM). He chairs and serves on the steering committees of several international clinical studies involving cancer patients.

Research interests
Past research concerned the hormone/growth factor-receptor interaction, the prognostic role of hormone and growth factor receptors and the development of new therapeutic strategies.
Currently, the focus is on ‘translational research’:
a) In the clinical development of novel therapeutic strategies based on targeted therapies against growth factors receptors and mitogenic molecules.
b) In the hormonal treatment of breast cancer.
c) In the definition of the prognostic and predictive role of biological parameters in different types of cancer.

Selected publications
De Placido S, Carlomagno C, De Laurentiis M,
Bianco AR. C-erbB2 expression predicts
tamoxifen efficacy in breast cancer patients.
Breast Cancer Res Treat 1998;52:55-64.

Ciardiello F, Caputo R, Bianco R, Damiano V,
Pomatico G, Pepe S, Bianco AR, Agrawal S,
Mendelsohn J, Tortora G. Cooperative inhibition of
renal cancer growth by anti-EGF receptor antibody
and protein kinase A antisense oligonucleotide. J
Nat Cancer Ins 1998;90:1087-94.

De Laurentiis M, De Placido S, Bianco AR, Clark
GM, Ravdin PM. A prognostic model that makes a
quantitative estimate of probability of relapse for
breast cancer patients. Clin Cancer Res
1999;5:4133-9.

De Placido S, Carlomagno C, Ciardiello F, De
Laurentiis M, Pepe S, Ruggiero A, Tortora G,
Panico L, D’Antonio A, Pettinato G, Petrella G,
Bianco AR. Measurement of neovascularization is
an independent prognosticator of survival in
node-negative breast cancer patients with long-term
follow up. Clin Cancer Res 1999;5:2854-9.

Ciardiello F, Caputo R, Bianco R, Damiano V,
Pomatico G, De Placido S, Bianco AR, Tortora G.
Antitumor effect and potentiation of cytotoxic
drugs activity in human cancer cells by ZD-1839
(Iressa), an EGFR-selective tyrosine kinase
inhibitor. Clin Cancer Res 2000;6:2053-63.