Francesco Petrella, MD, PhD, is Chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at Fondazione IRCCS San Gerardo dei Tintori in Monza, Italy, and Associate Professor of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Milan. He graduated in Medicine and Surgery with honors from the University of Naples Federico II and completed his specialization in General Thoracic Surgery with honors at the University of Bologna, followed by a clinical fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Vienna. He subsequently obtained a PhD in Regenerative Medicine from the University of Padua (2013–2016). From 2004 to 2023, he worked at the IRCCS European Institute of Oncology in Milan, where he became Deputy Director of the Division of Thoracic Surgery. His clinical and research interests include thoracic surgical oncology, minimally invasive surgery and regenerative medicine. He developed and patented a dedicated circular clamp for lung metastasectomy and described a personal enucleoresection technique using this device, subsequently published as the “Circular Clamp” technique. He also pioneered the bronchoscopic transplantation of autologous bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of post-resectional bronchopleural fistula, reporting the first successful clinical application in the New England Journal of Medicine.