Paolo G. Casali, MD, is currently Director of the Medical Oncology Unit 2 at the Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Milan, Italy, where he also serves as Secretary of the Ethics Committee, and is Associate Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Milan. He is board certified in Haematology in 1987 and in Clinical Oncology in 1990, and got the ESMO European certification on Medical Oncology in 1994. At the Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Milan, he was Clinical Fellow from 1985 to 1989, Clinical Researcher from 1989 to 1992, Staff Physician from 1992 (full-Staff Physician from 1994), and Responsible/Director of units from 2002 to present.

Within ESMO, he is currently Chair of the European Policy Committee and has a seat on the ESMO Council and was previously Transitional Director of Public Policy. He is a member of the steering committee of the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee, since 2018. He is a member of the Sarcoma Faculty, that he chaired from 2006 to 2011. He was ESMO’s Treasurer from 2005 to 2010, Chair of the Public Policy and European Affairs Committee from 2011 to 2015, and Chair of the Public Policy steering committee and the EU Policy Committee from 2016 to 2018. He was a member of the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee as Subject Editor, from 2008 to 2014. Previously, he was a member of the Publication Committee. 

His clinical and research activities focus on sarcomas. He is the Secretary of the Italian Sarcoma Group and a member of the Soft Tissue & Bone Sarcoma Group of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society (CTOS) and co-founder and co-Editor-in-chief of Clinical Sarcoma Research, an open-access journal on sarcoma.

In the area of rare cancers, he currently coordinates the Joint Action on Rare Cancers (JARC), carried out from 2017 to 2019 within the framework of the Third Health Programme of the European Union (EU) with 34 partners and 18 EU Member States; chairs the Sarcoma domain of EURACAN, the European Reference Network for Adult Rare Solid Cancers; is a member of the Coordinating group of the Italian National Network on Rare Cancers;coordinates the steering committee of Rare Cancers Europe, an ESMO-launched multistakeholder initiative to address the many challenges posed by rare cancers; coordinates the Rare Tumours programme of the European School of Oncology (ESO). 

In 2014-15, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the European CanCer Organization (ECCO). He is a member of the steering committee of the Clinical Academic Cancer Research Forum (CAREFOR) and a member of the Board of Directors of the Federation of Italian Cooperative Oncology Groups (FICOG).

He is (co)author of more than 250 papers in peer-reviewed medical journals, as well as (co)Author of chapters in oncology textbooks and handbooks. Throughout these last years, he has been an invited speaker at congresses and scientific/educational events of ESMO, ASCO, CTOS, ECCO, ESO, ESSO, ESTRO and others, and has been serving in the scientific committees of several such congresses and events.