Dr. Innocenti is an associate professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the first associate director for oncology research in the Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy. He holds appointments in the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Innocenti obtained his MD from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, followed by residencies in clinical pharmacology and oncology. He has a PhD in Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Chemotherapy. He joined UNC in January 2011 after twelve years of research in cancer pharmacogenetics at the University of Chicago, where he directed the Pharmacology Course for the Pritzker School of Medicine for the previous seven years.

Dr. Innocenti is the principal investigator of numerous pharmacogenetic studies within the Alliance of Clinical Trials in Oncology (previously Cancer and Leukemia Group B), where he serves as the chair of the Gastrointestinal Solid Tumor Correlative Science Group. He is the vice chair (and the incoming Chair for 2012) of the Oncology Section at the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Publications and Achievements

He has published more than eighty peer-reviewed publications and book chapters in clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenomics, and he is the editor of three books in the field of pharmacogenomics. Dr. Innocenti sits on the editorial board of Journal of Clinical Oncology, Pharmacogenetics and Genomics, Therapeutic Drug Monitoring, Current Drug Metabolism, and others. He is the only associate editor for Pharmacogenomics, and one of the associate editors for Frontiers in Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics. He has organized three international symposia on genomic and translational medicine in 2009, 2010, and 2012.

One of Dr. Innocenti’s exemplary achievements is the elucidation of the genetic basis of severe neutropenia in cancer patients treated with irinotecan, a poster child for pharmacogenetic. According to these results, the label of irinotecan was revised in 2005. Dr. Innocenti is a co-inventor of the FDA-approved UGT1A1 genetic test for patients treated with irinotecan.

Research Program

Dr. Innocenti’s NIH-funded research program is currently focused on the discovery of genomic determinants of efficacy and toxicity of cancer chemotherapy, integrating clinical genomic investigation with functional evaluation of gene variation. The program is articulated in three main themes:

• Theme 1: Clinical genome-wide and candidate gene investigations of VEGF-pathway inhibitors. These studies provide the platform for discovery and implementation of genomic markers of individualize therapy in oncology.
• Theme 2: Functional genetics of angiogenesis genes. This research addresses how functional germline variants of VEGF-pathway genes affect the in vitro action of VEGF-pathway inhibitors and gene expression in tumors. The results of these studies propose novel biomarkers for clinical investigation and will enrich the clinical associations of Theme 1.
• Theme 3: Genome-wide regulation of gene expression in the human liver. This project provides a comprehensive assessment of the heritable component of gene expression variation in the liver. These results represent a useful resource for UNC faculty and the scientific community as a whole, as they will be made publicly available. They serve as the knowledge basis for any pharmacogenetic study (like those in Theme 1), as well as for studies of heritable liver-related traits.