Scapagnini graduated in Medicine in 1965, and then taught Neuropharmacology in 1968 and Neuroendocrinology in 1972; from 1967 to 1973 he was a professor at the Heymans Institute of the University of Ghent, the YC Medical Center in San Francisco, and at MIT in Boston, and has been a consultant of NASA from 1969 to 1975.

In 2008, several areas of Catania, not only in the suburbs but also in the city center, remained many days without lights due to the non-fulfillment of payments to ENEL by the municipality.

On 20 May 2009, the Corriere della Sera website reported the news that Scapagnini has been hospitalized on a confidential prognosis "following severe metabolic decompensation".

[6] On 2 April 2013, he died in Rome at the age of 71, after his health had deteriorated in the last few days, having been seized by a cerebral stroke and then by a heart attack.

On 2 May 2008, Scapagnini was sentenced to two years and six months of jail for irregularities in the granting of social security contributions by the municipality to employees for damage caused by ash from Mount Etna.