Quick Facts
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    Expertise:
    Pleural Mesothelioma
    Immunotherapy
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    Speciality:
    Thoracic Oncology
  • gender symbols interlocked icon
    Gender:
    Male
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    Language:
    English, Catalan, Dutch, Italian, Spanish
  • pin location icon
    Primary Location:
    Mount Sinai Hospital

Rolfo specializes in treatment for thoracic malignancies such as lung cancer and pleural mesothelioma, translational oncology and new drug development while serving Ruttenberg Treatment Center and Mount Sinai West in New York City.

Before working at Mount Sinai, he joined the Greenebaum Cancer Center in Baltimore in 2018 after six years at the Antwerp University Hospital in Belgium, where he served as director of the Clinical Trials Management Program.

His research focus has been the personalization of treatment through biomarkers and immunotherapy for thoracic cancers.

“We have immunotherapy treatment today that can be specific to tumors and attack cancer cells,” Rolfo said. “We are diagnosing genetic alterations for more targeted therapy today. The results have been encouraging.”

His work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lung Cancer, Lancet Oncology and Nature Nanotechnology.

Rolfo received his medical degree from the National University of Cordoba, Argentina, in 1996. He completed a residency at the University of Milan, Italy, and did an internship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

He is part of the Educational Committee of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer and on the Membership Committee of the European Society of Medical Oncology.

Contact Dr. Christian Rolfo

Immunotherapy Advancements from Dr. Christian Rolfo

In 2019, Rolfo co-authored a study with Dr. Charles Simone that detailed the effectiveness of combining immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs, such as Opdivo and Keytruda, with proton beam therapy for mesothelioma.

The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer published another of Rolfo’s studies in 2019 on the advantages of liquid biopsies as an alternative to traditional tissue biopsies for non-small cell lung cancer.

He detailed multiple clinical uses, including biomarker identification, improved patient selection for treatment and drug resistance monitoring.

Rolfo was appointed vice-president of the International Society of Liquid Biopsy, a nonprofit organization that works toward erasing restrictions on liquid biopsy implementation in routine clinical practice.

He also has written on patient selection for immunotherapy treatment with solid tumors, the use of ipilimumab for treating non-small cell lung cancer, and the role of circulating tumor DNA in lung cancer. Rolfo has authored more than 250 scientific articles.