Christian Capitini, MD, professor and chief, Division of Hematology, Oncology, and Bone Marrow Transplant, has been appointed to serve as the acting director of the Carbone Cancer Center. Capitini, who joined the Department of Pediatrics in 2011, will be the first pediatric oncologist to lead the cancer center in its 51-year history. He will succeed Howard Bailey, MD, who has served as Carbone Cancer Center director since 2015.
“It’s a tremendous honor to serve as the acting director of our prestigious cancer center,” Capitini said. “The depth and breadth of research on this campus coupled with the innovative treatments for both adult and pediatric cancer patients is unparalleled. I look forward to leading our exceptional team of researchers and clinicians to revolutionize more effective approaches for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer for the state of Wisconsin and nationally.”
Capitini has served as co-leader of the Developmental Therapeutics Program at Carbone since 2020 and is active in the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program at American Family Children’s Hospital. Of note, Capitini was one of 13 principal investigators (PI) for the first multicenter CAR T-cell trial, which led to the FDA approval of tisagenlecleucel-T (Kymriah) for relapsed and refractory B-cell leukemia. He continues to serve as PI for numerous other clinical trials through Carbone, testing novel stem cell transplants and cellular therapies for childhood cancer at the children’s hospital.
Capitini has had continuous National Cancer Institute funding for over a decade focusing on laboratory research of cell-based immunotherapies, such as NK cells and CAR T-cells, for the treatment of high-risk childhood cancers as well as for treatment of immune-related adverse events like graft-versus-host-disease.
He has received many awards for his clinical and laboratory research contributions, including the Department of Pediatrics Gerard B. Odell Research Award, the Outstanding New Member Science Award from the Society for Pediatric Research, and the Janet Rowley Award from the Jonas Center Cellular Therapy Symposium at the University of Chicago. Nationally, Capitini is an active member of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer and recently served as their at-large director. Additionally, he is a section editor for the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer and serves on the executive board for the Pediatric Real World CAR T Consortium.
Capitini will start serving as acting director effective December 29, 2024. Bailey will work with Capitini through January 2025 to provide overlap and continuity.
Capitini will serve as acting director concurrently while a national search for the next permanent Carbone director is determined, the timeline for which will be decided by the new School of Medicine and Public Health dean once they have been identified.