Eelco de Bree was born in 1966 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. After graduating from the University of Utrecht Medical School, he moved to Greece in 1991. He completed his residency of General Surgery in the Medical School of Crete University Hospital in Heraklion, Greece, and became a board-certified surgeon in Greece and in the Netherlands. After a 2-year fellowship at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital / Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, during which he was actively involved in the randomized colorectal HIPEC study, he returned to Greece in 2000. Since then, he has been a surgical staff member at the Department of Surgical Oncology of the University Hospital in Heraklion, Greece. He successfully presented his thesis entitled ‘Objective assessment of the contribution of diagnostic methods in malignant jaundice’ at the Medical School of Crete in 1999. In 2004 he became Assistant Professor of Surgery, in March 2015 Associate Professor of Surgery, in February 2016 Associate Professor of General Surgery and Surgical Oncology and in February 2020 Professor of General Surgery and Surgical Oncology at the Medical School of Crete. Meanwhile, in 2014, he also received the certification of Surgical Oncologist in the Netherlands. Accordingly, he is registered as General Surgeon as well as Surgical Oncologist in the Specialist Register of the Royal Dutch Medical Association. In 2021, he became Head of the Department of Surgical Oncology of the University Hospital in Heraklion. He has been Head of the Division of Surgery of the Medical School of Crete from 2021 until 2023. As part of his training, after his fellowship he also visited the surgical departments of the University Hospital of Mannheim/Heidelberg and the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
His research, publications and clinical work have focused on Surgical Oncology. His particular areas of interest include melanoma, sarcoma, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, the treatment of peritoneal carcinomatosis, and regional chemotherapy (such as intraoperative intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy). He has published more than 130 papers in international peer-reviewed journals (Scopus and Google Scolar: H-index 35 and 43, approximately 6000 and 9000 citations, respectively) and more than 50 papers in national journals, while he is author of 11 chapters in medical books. He has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal ‘Hellenic Surgical Oncology’ from 2014 until 2017 and Associate Editor of the ‘Hellenic Journal of Surgery’ from 2017 until 2020. He is a reviewer for more than 80 international journals, a member of the Editorial Board of eleven international journals, and a member of numerous international medical societies, mainly concerning surgical oncology. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Society of Surgical Oncology from 2014 until 2017 and is since 2018 member of the Board of Directors (and currently vice-president) of the Greek Society of Coloproctology. He has been member of several committees at the Medical School of Crete, such as the Committee for Postgraduate Studies (from 2011 until today). He is responsible for the pregraduate student courses Introduction in Surgery, Surgery A and Clinical Practice in Surgery.