Francesco Iorio
Human Technopole
Biography
Francesco Iorio is a computational biologist working at the interface of functional genomics, cancer dependency mapping, and data integration. He is a Senior Research Group Leader at Human Technopole (Milan), where his group develops computational and experimental frameworks to identify and interpret cancer genetic dependencies, therapeutic targets and biomarkers.
His research focuses on large-scale CRISPR screening, synthetic lethality, genetic interactions, and the integration of perturbational data with multi-omics and phenotypic readouts. He has contributed to the development and analysis of several foundational cancer dependency map resources and has played a leading role in advancing methods for context-aware dependency inference and translational target discovery.
Francesco has held senior research positions at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, EMBL-EBI, and within international pre-competitive initiatives, and is actively involved in building collaborative infrastructures for functional cancer genomics in Europe. He is a principal organiser of the European Cancer Dependency Map (EuroDepMap) Symposia and a co-founder of the PRECISE Consortium.
Relevant Publications
- Integrative ensemble modelling of cetuximab sensitivity in colorectal cancer patient-derived xenograftsPerron U., Grassi E., Chatzipli A., Nature Communications (2024).
- An unbiased lncRNA dropout CRISPR-Cas9 screen reveals RP11-350G8.5 as a novel therapeutic target for multiple myelomaGrillone K., Ascrizzi S., Cremaschi P., Amato J., Polerà N., Croci O., Rocca R., Riillo C., Conforti F., Graziano R., Brancaccio D., Caracciolo D., Alcaro S., Pagano B., Randazzo A., Tagliaferri P., Iorio F., Tassone P., Blood (2024).
- A benchmark of computational methods for correcting biases of established and unknown origin in CRISPR-Cas9 screening dataVinceti A., Iannuzzi R.M., Boyle I., Genome Biology (2024).
- A comprehensive clinically informed map of dependencies in cancer cells and framework for target prioritizationPacini C., Duncan E., Gonçalves E., Gilbert J., Bhosle S., Horswell S., Karakoc E., Lightfoot H., Curry E., Muyas F., Bouaboula M., Pedamallu C.S., Cortes-Ciriano I., Behan F.M., Zalmas L.-P., Barthorpe A., Francies H., Rowley S., Pollard J., Beltrao P., Parts L., Iorio F., Garnett M.J., Cancer Cell (2024).
- An interactive web application for processing, correcting, and visualizing genome-wide pooled CRISPR-Cas9 screensVinceti A., De Lucia R.R., Cremaschi P., Perron U., Karakoc E., Mauri L., Fernandez C., Kluczynski K.H., Anderson D.S., Iorio F., Cell Reports Methods (2023).
- Reduced gene templates for supervised analysis of scale-limited CRISPR-Cas9 fitness screensVinceti A., Perron U., Trastulla L., Iorio F., Cell Reports (2022).
- Integrated cross-study datasets of genetic dependencies in cancerPacini C., Dempster J.M., Boyle I., Nature Communications (2021).
- Cancer research needs a better mapBoehm J.S., Garnett M.J., Adams D.J., Francies H.E., Golub T.R., Hahn W.C., Iorio F., McFarland J.M., Parts L., Vazquez F., Nature (2021).
- Prioritization of cancer therapeutic targets using CRISPR–Cas9 screensBehan F.M., Iorio F., Picco G., Gonçalves E., Beaver C.M., Migliardi G., Santos R., Rao Y., Sassi F., Pinnelli M., Ansari R., Harper S., Jackson D.A., McRae R., Pooley R., Wilkinson P., van der Meer D., Dow D., Buser-Doepner C., Bertotti A., Trusolino L., Stronach E.A., Saez-Rodriguez J., Yusa K., Garnett M.J., Nature (2019).
- A landscape of pharmacogenomic interactions in cancerIorio F., Knijnenburg T.A., Vis D.J., Bignell G.R., Menden M.P., Schubert M., Aben N., Gonçalves E., Barthorpe S., Lightfoot H., Cokelaer T., Greninger P., van Dyk E., Chang H., de Silva H., Heyn H., Deng X., Egan R.K., Liu Q., Mironenko T., Mitropoulos X., Richardson L., Wang J., Zhang T., Moran S., Sayols S., Soleimani M., Tamborero D., Lopez-Bigas N., Ross-Macdonald P., Esteller M., Gray N.S., Haber D.A., Stratton M.R., Benes C.H., Wessels L.F.A., Saez-Rodriguez J., McDermott U., Garnett M.J., Cell (2016).