Date of birth: 28/07/1934

Date of death: 06/09/2015

Wikipedia

BIOGRAPHY

Gianni Bonadonna (1934-2015) received his degree in Medicine in1959 at the University of Milan and obtained a training fellowship at Memorial Hospital in New York. He returned in 1964 to the Istituto Nazionale Tumori in Milan where he became Director of the Division of Medical Oncology in 1976. In 1991, he was appointed Head of the Department of Cancer Medicine in the same institution. His main contributions to the field of oncology were the clinical trials allowing for the first time to demonstrate the usefulness of postoperative combination chemotherapy to prevent relapse of breast cancer, and a salvage regimen including in the combination regimen the drug adriamycin for the treatment of Hodgkin’s disease. He introduced in Italy the methodology of clinical trials in the cancer chemotherapy agents development. He founded and was the first President of the Associazione Italiana di Oncologia Medica. For these reasons he is considered as the father of Italian Medical Oncology.