Pierpaolo Correale

Pierpaolo Correale
Azienda Ospedaliera Bianchi-Melacrino-Morelli di Reggio Calabria · Department on Oncology, hematology and Radiotherapy

Doctor of Medicine Immuno-oncologist

About

233
Publications
14,444
Reads
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5,373
Citations
Additional affiliations
August 1994 - February 1998
National Cancer Institute (USA), National Institutes of Health
Position
  • Fogarthy Fellowship
March 2017 - present
Azienda Ospedaliera Bianchi-Melacrino-Morelli di Reggio Calabria
Position
  • Managing Director
March 1998 - February 2017
Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Senese
Position
  • Dirigente Medico primo livello, Oncologo clinico, Immunooncology specialist (since 2004)
Description
  • Oncology Unit until July 2012, subsequently, Staff member of the Radiotherapy Unit, responsible for the Translational immuno-oncology section
Education
October 1991 - October 1994
University of Naples Federico II
Field of study
  • Experimental Oncology
October 1989 - October 1996
University of Naples Federico II
Field of study
  • Specialty in Clinical Ocnology
September 1982 - July 1993
Policlinico Federico II di Napoli
Field of study
  • Medicine

Publications

Publications (233)
Article
Full-text available
Background: Sarcopenia, a syndrome characterized by age-related loss of muscle mass and function, lacks universally accepted diagnostic criteria, particularly for its role as a prognostic factor in elderly patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This study aimed to evaluate the prognostic significance of sarcopenia, assessed by psoas musc...
Article
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Immunotherapy represents an emergent and heterogeneous group of anticancer treatments harnessing the human immune-surveillance system, including immune-checkpoint inhibitor monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells (CAR-T) therapy, cancer vaccines and lymphocyte activation gene-3 (LAG-3) therapy. While remarkably effective aga...
Article
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Background The phase III GIM2 trial showed improved disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) with adjuvant dose-dense (DD) as compared with standard-interval (SI) chemotherapy in women with node-positive early-stage breast cancer (BC). This exploratory analysis aimed to investigate the benefit of different schedules according to body m...
Article
Background: The long-term results of the Italian randomized phase III GIM2 study showed that, in women with node-positive breast cancer (BC), dose-dense (DD) chemotherapy significantly improved both disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) compared with standard-interval (SI) chemotherapy. Obesity has been identified as an independent...
Article
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Tumor recognition by T cells is essential for antitumor immunity. A comprehensive characterization of T cell diversity may be key to understanding the success of immunomodulatory drugs and failure of PD-1 blockade in tumors such as multiple myeloma (MM). Here, we use single-cell RNA and T cell receptor sequencing to characterize bone marrow T cells...
Article
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Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is frequently complicated by central nervous system (CNS) metastases affecting patients' life expectancy and quality. At the present clinical trials including neurosurgery, radiotherapy (RT) and systemic treatments alone or in combination have provided controversial results. CNS involvement is even more frequent i...
Article
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In this commentary, using existing clinical trial data and FDA approvals we propose that there is currently a critical need for an appropriate balancing between the financial impact of new cancer drugs and their actual benefit for patients. By adopting “pleural mesothelioma” as our clinical model we summarize the most relevant pertinent and availab...
Article
Background Previous analyses of the GIM (Gruppo Italiano Mammella) 2 study showed that addition of fluorouracil to epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, and paclitaxel in patients with node-positive early breast cancer does not improve outcome, whereas dose-dense chemotherapy induces a significant improvement in both disease-free survival and overall survi...
Article
Full-text available
Peripheral immune-checkpoint blockade with mAbs to programmed cell death receptor-1 (PD-1) (either nivolumab or pembrolizumab) or PD-Ligand-1 (PD-L1) (atezolizumab, durvalumab, or avelumab) alone or in combination with doublet chemotherapy represents an expanding treatment strategy for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) patients. This s...
Article
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The treatment scenario for newly‐diagnosed transplant‐ineligible multiple myeloma patients (NEMM) is quickly evolving. Currently, combinations of proteasome inhibitors (PI) and/or immunomodulatory drugs (IMiD) +/‐ the monoclonal antibody Daratumumab are used for first‐line treatment, even if head‐to‐head comparisons are lacking. To compare efficacy...
Article
Full-text available
Simple Summary The present study aimed to investigate the possible use of MRI delta texture analysis (D-TA) in order to predict the extent of pathological response in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer addressed to neoadjuvant chemo-radiotherapy (C-RT) followed by surgery. We found that D-TA may really predict the frequency of pCR in this...
Article
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Background Frontline immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI)-based regimens in non-oncogene-addicted non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have been deeply investigated. To rank the available therapeutic options, we carried out a systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis. Methods A comprehensive search for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of ICI reg...
Article
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Importance: Some recently proposed frontline therapies for malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) are very costly, yet their impact on quality of life and overall survival of these patients remains arguable. Given the high social toll of this aggressive occupational cancer, it is paramount to establish the real clinical benefit of these treatments....
Article
Introduction: In the current study, we have investigated the effects of the different modalities of treatment (volume of radiotherapy [RT], previous surgery) as well as the Gleason score of prostate cancer (PC) on the lymphocyte composition of PC patients undergoing RT. Methods: This is a monoinstitutional study that prospectively included PC pa...
Article
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Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) represent an important advance in the adjuvant treatment of patients with high-risk melanoma. Although the safety profile of anti-programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) is fairly acceptable, different immune-related adverse events (irAEs) are described. Herein we report for the first time a notably multidisciplin...
Article
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Background: Combined small-cell lung cancer (CSCLC) refers to the simultaneous presence of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and any subtype of the non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This study aimed to explore the prognosis of CSCLC, NSCLC, and pure SCLC patients, and to develop a nomogram to estimate the overall survival (OS) for CSCLC patients. M...
Article
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An immune checkpoint blockade with mAbs to PD-1 and PD-L1 is an expanding therapeutic option for mNSCLC patients. This treatment strategy is based on the use of mAbs able to restore the anti-tumor activity of intratumoral T cells inhibited by PD-1 binding to PD-L1/2 on tumor and inflammatory cells. It has been speculated that a chronic status of sy...
Article
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Large-scale immune monitoring is becoming routinely used in clinical trials to identify determinants of treatment responsiveness, particularly to immunotherapies. Flow cytometry remains one of the most versatile and high throughput approaches for single-cell analysis; however, manual interpretation of multidimensional data poses a challenge to capt...
Article
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This case report demonstrates a small repetition of the case series carried out in Italy wherein inhaled adenosine was administered to patients experiencing severe and worsening coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). The two cases are important not only because they were the first of their type in the United States, but also because both patients wer...
Article
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The expanding clinical application of CDK4- and CDK6-inhibiting drugs in the managements of breast cancer has raised a great interest in testing these drugs in other neoplasms. The potential of combining these drugs with other therapeutic approaches seems to be an interesting work-ground to explore. Even though a potential integration of CDK4 and C...
Article
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Multiple myeloma (MM) is the second most common hematologic malignancy, characterized by a multi-step evolutionary path, which starts with an early asymptomatic stage, defined as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) evolving to overt disease in 1% of cases per year, often through an intermediate phase known as “smoldering” MM (...
Article
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Peripheral-immune-checkpoint blockade (P-ICB) with mAbs to PD-1 (nivolumab and pembrolizumab) or PD-L1 (atezolizumab, durvalumab, avelumab) alone or combination with chemotherapy represents a novel active treatment for mNSCLC patients. However, this therapy can be associated to immune-related adverse events (irAEs) and high cost. Therefore, finding...
Article
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Pembrolizumab (mAb to PD-1) has been recently approved for the therapy of pretreated urothelial cancer. Despite the efficacy, it is often accompanied by unpredictable and sometime severe immune-related (ir) adverse events (AEs). Here, we report the clinical and immune–biological characterization of a patient with a metastatic bladder cancer who dev...
Poster
Therapeutic administration of immuno-checkpoint inhibitors as Nivolumab, a 1-cell death receptor monoclonal antibody (PD1), is an emerging and promising strategy in the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC). Aim of this study was to monitor the autoantibody titer, in combination with other inflammatory indi...
Article
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Introduction: Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is having a devastating psychological impact on patients, especially patients with cancer. This work aims to evaluate mood disorders of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy during COVID-19 in comparison with cancer patients who underwent radiation therapy in 2019. Materials and Methods: We included...
Article
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Lack of specific antiviral treatment for COVID-19 has resulted in long hospitalizations and high mortality rate. By harnessing the regulatory effects of adenosine on inflammatory mediators, we have instituted a new therapeutic treatment with inhaled adenosine in COVID-19 patients, with the aim of reducing inflammation, the onset of cytokine storm,...
Article
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Background T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is an aggressive disease with a poor cure rate for relapsed/resistant patients. Due to the lack of T-cell restricted targetable antigens, effective immune-therapeutics are not presently available and the treatment of chemo-refractory T-ALL is still an unmet clinical need. To develop novel immun...
Article
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Background: Neoadjuvant therapy has significantly improved the 5-year overall survival (OS) of patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The CheckMate 159 trial showed that neoadjuvant therapy with a single-drug programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor (nivolumab) achieved major pathological response (MPR) and pathologic...
Article
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Background SARS-Cov2 infection may trigger lung inflammation and acute-respiratory-distress-syndrome (ARDS) that requires active ventilation and may have fatal outcome. Considering the severity of the disease and the lack of active treatments, 14 patients with Covid-19 and severe lung inflammation received inhaled adenosine in the attempt to therap...
Article
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients can develop interstitial pneumonia, which, in turn, can evolve into acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This is accompanied by an inflammatory cytokine storm. severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has proteins capable of promoting the cytokine storm, especially in pati...
Article
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Tumor-infiltrating T cell rescue by programmed cell death receptor-1 (PD-1)/PD-1 ligand-1 (PD-L1) immune checkpoint blockade is a recommended treatment for malignant diseases, including metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (mNSCLC), malignant melanoma (MM), head and neck, kidney, and urothelial cancer. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against either P...
Article
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Aromatase inhibitors (AIs) have radically changed the prognosis of hormone receptor positive breast cancer (BC) in post-menopausal women, and are a mainstay of the adjuvant therapy for BC after surgery in place of, or following, Tamoxifen. However, AIs aren’t side effect-free; frequent adverse events involve the musculoskeletal system, in the form...
Article
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The spread of COVID-19 is showing huge, unexplained, differences between northern and southern Italy. We hypothesized that the regional prevalence of specific class I human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles, which shape the anti-viral immune response, might partly underlie these differences. Through an ecological approach, we analyzed whether a set o...
Preprint
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Some COVID-19 patients develop interstitial pneumonia that can evolve into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). This is accompanied by an inflammatory cytokine storm. SarS-CoV has proteins capable of promoting cytokine storm, especially in patients with comorbidities, including obesity. Since there is currently no resolutive therapy for ARDS...
Article
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Somatostatin analogs mantain their major role in the treatment of patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and have multiple modulatory effects on the immune system. Here, we evaluated the effects of lanreotide treatment on expression of Th1, Th2 cytokine patterns in serum of patients with NETs and in bronchial and pancreatic NET cell li...
Article
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Obesity is a characteristic of COVID-19 patients and the risk of malnutrition can be underestimated due to excess of fat: a paradoxical danger. Long ICU hospitalization exposes patients to a high risk of wasting and loss of lean body mass. The complex management precludes the detection of anthropometric parameters for the definition and monitoring...
Article
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Currently, the prognosis of Ph+ acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL) patients relapsing after an allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT) remains poor, with few therapeutic options available. Here we present the case of a 32 years old patient with dasatinib-resistant post-transplant molecular relapse of ALL, who received, as s...
Article
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Background Nivolumab is a human monoclonal antibody against programmed cell death receptor-1 (PD-1) able to rescue quiescent tumor infiltrating cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) restoring their ability to kill target cells expressing specific tumor antigen-derived epitope peptides bound to homologue human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules. Nivolumab i...
Article
e15094 Background: Tumor infiltrating CTL-rescue by PD-1/PDL1 immune-checkpoint blockade is a recommended treatment for several malignancies including non-small-cell-lung-cancer (NSCLC), malignant melanoma, head and neck, kidney, and urothelial cancer. MAbs to either PD-1 (Nivolumab and Pembrolizumab) or PDL1 (Atezolizumab and Durvalumab) are consi...
Article
Background Lung toxicity in patients undergoing cetuximab and radiotherapy (Cetux-RT) for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) has been reported in literature and represents a serious side effect of concurrent therapies. Methods We report a case of a HNSCC patient that developed neck emphysema during the course of Cetux-RT. The patient wa...
Article
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Texture analysis (TA) can provide quantitative features from medical imaging that can be correlated to clinical endpoints. The challenges relevant to robustness of radiomics features have been analyzed by many researchers, as it seems to be influenced by acquisition and reconstruction protocols. Delta-texture analysis (D-TA), conversely, consist in...
Article
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The cancer vaccine Vx-001, which targets the universal tumour antigen TElomerase Reverse Transcriptase (TERT), can mount specific Vx-001/TERT572 CD8 + cytotoxic T cells; this immune response is associated with improved overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced/metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). A randomised, double blind, phase 2b...
Article
Background Effectiveness of music-based interventions (Music therapy, MT) on cancer patients’ is a current research theme. Oncology patients may respond to radiation treatment (RT) with anxiety expressed as stress, fear, depression, and frustration. Objectives The aim of this review is to discuss the effectiveness of MT in patients undergoing RT....
Article
Full-text available
Immune checkpoint blockade is an emerging anticancer strategy, and Nivolumab is a human mAb to PD-1 that is used in the treatment of a number of different malignancies, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), kidney cancer, urothelial carcinoma and melanoma. Although the use of Nivolumab prolongs survival in a number of patients, this treatme...
Article
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Background: GOLFIG is a chemo-immunotherapy regimen established in preclinical models that combines gemcitabine + FOLFOX (fluoropyrimidine backbone coupled to oxaliplatin) poly-chemotherapy with low-dose s. c. recombinant interleukin-2 (rIL-2) and granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF). Promising antitumor effects in metastatic c...
Poster
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Introduzione: Il sistema immunitario svolge un ruolo chiave nello sviluppo e nella progressione tumorale attraverso la risposta innata ed adattiva. Gli studi degli ultimi decenni hanno permesso di chiarire meglio i meccanismi immunologici e l'immunoterapia si è di conseguenza sviluppata con l'utilizzo di anticorpi monoclonali che agiscono non diret...
Article
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Background Immune-checkpoint blockade has shown anti-tumor activity in MSI mCRC patients only, thus, the research of more efficacious immunological strategies for colon cancer treatment is still open. GOLFIG, is a safe and active chemo-immunotherapy regimen designed on the basis of preclinical immune-oncological findings and evaluated in two subseq...
Article
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Aim To assess the role of perilesional edema (PE) in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) brain metastases (BM) undergoing radiosurgery (SRS). Methods This series includes 46 patients with 1–2 BM treated with SRS, selected out of all patients referred for radiotherapy (RT) for BMs over 5 years (2013 to 2017). Both the PE and gross tumor volume (G...
Article
e15057 Background: In the last few years, there has been a renewed interest on the potential use of immunotherapy alone or combined to chemotherapy (CHT) for mCRC patients. GOLFIG regimen (biweekly Gemcitabine+FOLFOX and IL2 and GM-CSF) was designed to enhance immunomodulating effects of selected cytotoxic drugs by combining them with cytokines abl...
Article
Immune-checkpoint blockade by Nivolumab, a human monoclonal antibody to programmed cell death receptor-1, is an emerging treatment for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC). In order to prolong patient survival, this treatment requires a continuous cross-priming of tumor derived-antigens to supply fresh tumor-specific immune-effectors; a p...
Article
Full-text available
Background: We hypothesized that texture analysis (TA) from the preoperative MRI can predict early disease progression (ePD), defined as the percentage of patients who relapsed or showed distant metastasis within three months from the radical surgery, in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC, stage II and III, AJCC) undergoing neoadju...