He was born in Pesaro in 1962, and graduated in Medicine and Surgery from Rome’s Catholic University, followed by a research doctorate in Microbiological and Virological Science at the University of Genoa.

He was a visiting student at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Wistar Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, a visiting scientist at the Center for Molecular Genetics of the University of California in San Diego and a visiting investigator at the Department of Immunology of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He worked as a researcher at the Gemelli Teaching Hospital of the Catholic University of Rome, and later moved to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ancona, where he held a teaching post in Virology at the Faculty of Science.

Since 2004 he has worked at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of San Raffaele University in Milan, first as an associate professor, and then as a full professor of Microbiology and Virology.

He has written numerous scientific studies and is very active as a science communicator. His publications include Il vaccino non è un’opinione. Le vaccinazioni spiegate a chi proprio non le vuole capire [The Vaccine is Not An Opinion: Vaccinations Explained To Who Doesn’t Want to Understand] (published by Mondadori), La congiura dei somari. Perché la scienza non può essere democratica [Conspiracy of Donkeys: Why Science Can’t Be Democratic] (Rizzoli), Balle mortali. Meglio vivere con la scienza che morire coi ciarlatani [Deathly Bullcrap: Better to Live with Science than Die with Charlatans] (Rizzoli), and Omeopatia. Bugie, leggende e verità [Homeopathy: Lies, Legends, and Truth] (Rizzoli).