Francesco Iorio
- Senior Research Group Leader, Iorio Group
Francesco is a computer scientist by training. He completed his PhD studies at the University of Salerno and the TeleThon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM, Naples – Italy), where he focused on computational methods for drug discovery and repositioning.
Subsequently, he has been awarded a joint EMBL – European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI) post-doctoral (ESPOD) fellowship to work on integrative computational frameworks for predicting and dissecting drug sensitivity in cancer, analysing data from large-scale in vitro drug screens.
Following this, as a senior bioinformatician at EBI, Francesco has been the leading the analysis of data from a large-scale genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 pooled screen across hundreds of cancer cell lines, with the aim of identifying synthetic lethalities in cancer and identifying new therapeutic targets.
From 2018 to 2020 he has been leading the WSI’s Cancer Dependency Map Analytics team, providing computational support to the Cancer Dependency Map partnership: an international endeavour involving the WSI and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard aiming at identifying all the genetic dependencies and vulnerabilities existing in cancer cells. In this role, he has been leading the development of new algorithms and computational tools for the analysis and integration of large-scale cancer pharmacogenomics and functional genomics datasets (from chemical and genome editing screens).
Since late 2020 Francesco is a Research Group Leader in Computational Biology at the Human Technopole (Milan, Italy) where he is establishing a research program in Computational cancer Pharmacogenomics and Therapeutic Target Discovery.
Since November 2019 he is a Scientific Advisor for the joint Cancer Research Horizon – AstraZeneca Functional Genomics Centre (Cambridge, UK).
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Publications
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02/2026 - FEBS Letters
Genetic interactions, synthetic lethality and complexity in cancer vulnerability mapping—Insights and perspectives from the 2nd EuroDepMap symposium
Large-scale perturbational approaches have transformed cancer research, enabling systematic identification of tumour-specific dependencies and therapeutic vulnerabilities. However, many clinically relevant vulnerabilities arise from genetic interactions, including synthetic lethal and buffering relationships, and are shaped by cellular state, lineage and treatment history. Interpreting complex dependency landscapes increasingly relies on advanced computational and AI-based approaches integrating molecular, […]
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08/2025 - The EMBO Journal
Tau uptake by human neurons depends on receptor LRP1 and kinase LRRK2
Extracellular release and uptake of pathogenic forms of the microtubule-associated protein tau contribute to the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Defining the cellular mechanisms and pathways for tau entry to human neurons is essential to understanding tauopathy pathogenesis and enabling the rational design of disease-modifying therapeutics. Here, whole-genome, loss-of-function CRISPR screens in […]
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07/2025 - Nature Genetics
The synthetic lethal interaction between CDS1 and CDS2 is a vulnerability in uveal melanoma and across multiple tumor types
Metastatic uveal melanoma is an aggressive disease with limited effective therapeutic options. To comprehensively map monogenic and digenic dependencies, we performed CRISPR–Cas9 screening in ten extensively profiled human uveal melanoma cell line models. Analysis involved genome-wide single-gene and combinatorial paired-gene CRISPR libraries. Among our 76 uveal melanoma-specific essential genes and 105 synthetic lethal gene pairs, […]
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07/2025 - BMC Genomics
Cross-tissue gene expression interactions from bulk, single cell and spatial transcriptomics with crossWGCNA
Background Understanding the molecular interactions between cells, tissues or organs is key to understanding the functioning of a biological system as a whole. Results Here, we propose crossWGCNA: a co-expression-based method that identifies highly interacting genes unbiasedly and that we employ to study stroma-epithelium communication in breast cancer. CrossWGCNA can be applied to bulk, single […]
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06/2025 - Molecular Therapy Methods and Clinical Development.
Impact of Culture Platform Transition on Adipose-derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Molecular Signatures: A Multi-Omics Analysis of Small-Scale versus Large-Scale Production
Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are being tested in numerous clinical trials, yet the limited progression of these trials to advanced stages indicates unresolved translational challenges. Expanding MSCs is a critical step in most therapeutic applications and bioreactor-based culture offers large-scale production compared to monolayer cultures. Nevertheless, since MSCs sense their microenvironment, it is crucial to […]
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