OPBG is a Scientific Institute for Research and Health Care, Italy’s main paediatric Hospital providing advanced health care for children and performing basic, clinical and translational research activities. The Hospital is part of the Italian National Healthcare System and is widely recognized as referral centre for all paediatrics specialties at national and international levels. The Hospital offers a complete range of healthcare services to children.

OPBG has a total permanent staff of approximately 2.500 employees, of which 550 physicians, 45 biologists and pharmacists, involved both in clinical and in research activities. The Hospital’s clinical activities run side by side with its scientific research, aiming at constantly improving and innovating diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.

The Department of Pediatric Onco-haematology and Transfusion Medicine, chaired by Prof. Franco Locatelli, is the main Italian Centre for the care and research in the field of paediatric Haematology and Oncology, and is internationally known as a centre of excellence. In the last years, the Department was given a further boost by the development of the programme for the transplantation of haemopoietic stem cells from partially HLA-compatible family donor (haploidentical transplant) for patients suffering from haematological disorders. The Department plays an active part in the experimental activities and protocols managed under the aegis of the ITCC (Innovative Treatment for Children with Cancer) European Participant, promoting and coordinating numerous phase I, phase II and phase III studies on the use of new drugs in paediatric oncohaematological diseases.

Around 1/8 of the whole number of new diagnoses of cancer in pediatic patients in Italy are performed at the Department of Haematology/Oncology of the Bambino Gesù Hospital, which coordinates the National protocols for childhood AML, as well as of infant -leukaemia and relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. This centre is credited as one of the most qualified worldwide in paediatric HSCT and adoptive immunotherapy for the prevention and treatment of both leukaemia relapse and infectious complications occurring in immunocompromised individuals. In the Bambino Gesù Hospital, all types of allograft (i.e. cord blood transplants, T cell depleted transplants from HLA-partially matched relatives, matched unrelated donor transplants) are routinely employed for treating children with either malignant or non-malignant disorders.