Born in Verscio, in 1942, he is Professor (full professor) of medical oncology at the Faculty of Medicine in Bern, Switzerland.
In 1978 he created the Cantonal Oncology Service in Tessin which in 1999 became the Institute of Oncology of Southern Switzerland (IOSI) in Bellinzona, Canton Tessin (Switzerland), an institute which encompasses medical oncology, radio-oncology, nuclear medicine, palliative care, haematology and an important research division and of which he was scientific director of oncology until 2017.
Franco Cavalli has an international reputation for the treatment and research of malignant lymphoma and new drugs.
In 1981 he organized in Lugano the first edition of the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML). Until 2011 it was held every three years, starting in 2011 once every two years. It has become the most important congress worldwide on malignant lymphoma.
In 1990 he was the founder and chief editor until the year 2000 of Annals of Oncology, the leading European journal of medical oncology.
In 1996 he founded the International Extranodal Lymphoma Study Group (IELSG), which now comprises more than 200 institutions on 4 continents. IELSG is the leading cooperative group in the field of biological and clinical studies regarding extranodal lymphomas.
He has also been very active in the field of clinical evaluation of new anticancer drugs. The quality of his work has been recognised with 24 national and international awards, including the Petzcoller Award for his special dedication to oncology and the ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award.
He is an honorary professor at the Universities of Tianjin (China), Biskek (Kyrgyzstan), Managua (Nicaragua) and Havana (Cuba).
He has published more than 600 articles in peer-reviewed journals and contributed to numerous books on cancer, including the Textbook of Medical Oncology, along with Stanley Kaye (London), Heine H. Hansen (Copenhagen) and James O. Armitage (Omaha, Nebraska) He is on the editorial board of several other journals.
Franco Cavalli was President of the Swiss Cancer League and is Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the European School of Oncology (ESO) and of the World Oncology Forum (WOF). He was President of the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) between 2006 and 2008. Since 2015, he has been a member of the WHO Committee for the selection of essential medicines for cancer.
He is currently president of the Foundation for the Institute of Oncology Research, based in Bellinzona, which manages the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR), the International Extranodal Lymphoma Study Group (IELSG) and the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML).
Between 1995 and 2007 he was a member of the Swiss Parliament.