Paolo Scarpellini

Dr. Paolo Scarpellini is an infectious disease specialist at the Infectious Diseases Department of the IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele Turro under the supervision of Professor Antonella Castagna.

After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Milan in 1987, he received a specialization in infectious diseases at the same university in 1991. He completed his studies in microbiology and virology at the same university in 1997.

Clinically, Dr. Scarpellini leads the Infectious Diseases Advisory Department, consisting of 4 specialists and 2 PhD students who work in various departments of the internal medicine and surgical department of the hospital, which require about 5,000 consultations per year.

In the past, he also acted as coordinator and manager of activities related to routine hospitalization of the 35-bed Infectious Diseases Unit.

Since 1995, he has also been a member of the Committee for Infection Control in Hospitals (CIO) task force, where he is mainly involved in antibiotic control policy in the hospital through continuous training of medical and nursing staff, and the development and implementation of protocols for controlling hospital consumption of antibiotics.

Carries out outpatient activities (both industry and staff), dealing, in particular: HIV infection, mycobacterial infections (atypical mycobacteriosis and tuberculosis), infections of the osteoarticular and genitourinary systems, infections, and immunosuppression.

Finally, he works as an infectious disease consultant at other Gruppo San Donato institutions and at the Istituto Clinico Città Studi in Milan.

As for scientific activity, the doctor has always been engaged in infectious research.

At the Ospedale San Raffaele, he devoted himself to developing molecular biology methodologies for the rapid diagnosis of mycobacterial diseases. In particular, he independently optimized the methods of the nest polymerase chain reaction for the diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of tuberculosis disease. He collaborated with other researchers in optimizing methods for determining in vitro sensitization to specific antigens of M.tuberculosis species (ELISPOT-TB for ESAT-6 and CFP-10).

The doctor has been involved in several research projects: from 1995 to 1998 he was the leader of a research project within the National TB Project, Istituto Superiore di Sanità Rome; he also directed a small department of operational research at the hospital. Since May 2006 he has been the owner of an inter-company project in San Raffaele funded by the region of Lombardy (Pharmacological Surveillance Projects) to study and optimize preoperative antibiotic prophylaxis.

He has also collaborated on research to innovate the use of new antibacterial molecules.

Finally, in 2020, he actively collaborated in research on the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and treatment of Sars-Cov-2.

He is the author and co-author of several scientific articles published in international journals and book chapters. He constantly participates as a speaker at international industry congresses and conferences.