Alessandro Zerbi is currently the Director of the Pancreatic Surgery Unit at the Humanitas Research Hospital in Rozzano (Milan, Italy). He was born in Arona (Novara) on September 23, 1959. He graduated at the State University of Milan in 1984 and finished his residency in General Surgery in 1989. From 1987 to 2003 he worked as general surgeon at the Surgical Department of San Raffaele Hospital of Milan directed by Professor Di Carlo. He broadened his knowledge on pancreatic surgery during stages at MGH, Boston (1988, Prof Warshaw) and at Ulm Hospital, Germany (1990 and 1995, Prof Beger). From 2004 to 2009 he directed the Pancreatic Surgery Unit of San Raffaele Hospital. Since 2010 he is the chief of Pancreatic Surgery at the Humanitas Cancer Center. He performed as first surgeon more than 1.300 pancreatic resections; his Unit currently performs about 200 pancreatic and duodenal resections/year. From April 2016 he is Associated Professor of Surgery at Humanitas University; in September 2018 he achieved the qualification to Full Professor. From 2015 to 2017 he was the President of the Italian Association of Pancreatology (AISP). He is currently member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Chapter of E-AHPBA. From 2016 he is member of the Ethical Committee of Humanitas Research Hospital. He coordinated the group who settled in 2010 and then in 2015 the Italian Guidelines for Acute Pancreatitis and contributed to the Italian Guidelines on Chronic Pancreatitis (2010), to the Italian (2014) and European (2018) Guidelines on Cystic Pancreatic Tumors. He currently coordinates the Screening Program for Familiar Pancreatic Cancer in Italy and the Italian Group for minimally invasive pancreatic surgery (IGoMIPS). Peer reviewed scientific articles: 146 Total number of citations (Scopus): 5.062 Official H Index (Scopus): 42
The main area of clinical expertise is represented by pancreato-biliary diseases, and specifically: pancreatic cancer, endocrine tumors, cystic tumors, multidisciplinary integrated approach to pancreatic neoplasms, acute and chronic pancreatitis, pseudocysts. Moreover he gained wide experience in treating duodenal diseases (duodenal tumors, Vater’s ampulla tumors, duodenal cystic dystrophy) and distal bile duct tumors. He developed parenchyma-sparing procedures for the removal of endocrine and cystic pancreatic tumors, and conservative procedures for the treatment of duodenal and Vater’s ampulla tumors. He has a unique experience in performing spleen-preserving total pancreatectomy with endocrine islets autotransplantation. His main fields of clinical and basic research are the benign and malignant diseases of the pancreas and the technical aspects of pancreatic surgery. He currently collaborates with several research groups both inside Humanitas University and outside, in Italy as well as abroad, mainly focused on biologic, metabolic and immunologic characterization of pancreatic carcinoma. Moreover a partnership with Milano Politecnico is currently ongoing, to develop an artificial replica of the pancreas, and to identify new sealing agents (patch and/or glue) able to resist to the erosive action of pancreatic juice.