Giancarlo Vecchio has been Director of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Pathology at the University of Naples Federico II.He has been Associate Editor of Cancer Research. Is Associate Editor of Oncology Research, International Journal of Oncology, Tumori, Thyroid Research and of The Faculty of Medicine 1000. He has devoted much of his scientific life to Oncology. His work has been initially addressed to retroviruses, a category of viruses strictly related to cancer. Since research on retroviruses has led to the discovery of oncogenes, he has addressed his interest to this category of genes, one of the most important targets of genetic alterations of tumor cells. He showed that retroviral and cellular oncogenes (mainly ras genes) had an oncogenic potential toward epithelial cells.The work in his lab has been centered upon the role exerted by oncogenes in thyroid oncogenesis. A novel oncogene has been identified and cloned in his lab in1987.The gene (RET/PTC) is activated by chromosomal rearrangements, represents the first human oncogene isolated in Italy and is responsible of a high percentage of papillary thyroid cancers. His research group has shown that the gene rearrangement responsible for the activation of RET/PTC is a very frequent event in thyroid papillary carcinomas of children of the Chernobyl area. In his lab it has also been shown that point mutations of the RET gene are responsible of both familial and sporadic medullary type of thyroid carcinoma. These types of new findings, concerning human oncogenes in thyroid cancer, have brought fundamental insights into the molecular pathogenesis of human neoplasias and are now leading to new therapeutic treatments for these diseases. In 1995, for his contributions to cancer research, Giancarlo Vecchio has received the Fogarty Scholar in Residence award at the National Institutes of Health (U.S.A.).He is currently Director of the Istituto Superiore di Oncologia.