Antonio Lanzavecchia

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Antonio Lanzavecchia
Varese, Italy
Alma materUniversity of Pavia
Known forHis work in human immunology (T-cell B-cell cooperation, antigen processing and presentation, dendritic cell biology, lymphocyte activation and traffic, immunological memory and human monoclonal antibodies).
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
ETH-Zurich
Basel Institute for Immunology
University of Genoa
WebsiteINGM

Antonio Lanzavecchia (born in

Infectious Diseases. He is Head Human Immunology Program, Istituto Nazionale di Genetica Molecolare-INGM, Milan and SVP Senior research Fellow, Humabs/Vir Biotechnology,[1] Bellinzona and San Francisco (USA). Since 2017, he is also Professor at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).[2]

Career

Since 1980 Lanzavecchia's laboratory developed robust methods to study human T and B cells in vitro, first at the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Following Google Scholar, Lanzavecchia has an h-index of 162 (As of 2023).[3]

Research

Starting in the early Eighties, Lanzavecchia has contributed to the advancement of human immunology in three distinct fields: i) antigen presentation and dendritic cell biology; ii) lymphocyte activation and immunological memory and iii) human monoclonal antibodies. In 1985, using antigen-specific T and B cell clones, Lanzavecchia demonstrated that B cells efficiently capture, process and present antigen to T helper cells ([4]). This study uncovered a critical step in the process of T-B cell cooperation that is essential for high affinity antibody production and is the basis for the development of glycoconjugate vaccines.

He also studied the role of HLA class II molecules as receptors for self, versus foreign peptides (,[5][6]) and the role of inflammatory stimuli in promoting antigen presentation by antigen-presenting cells ([7]).

In 1994 Sallusto and Lanzavecchia discovered that human monocytes could be induced to differentiate in vitro into immature dendritic cells that resemble those that function as sentinels in peripheral tissues ([8]), contributing to the rapid advancement of the field in the late nineties. Taking advantage of such immature dendritic cells, they characterized in detail the maturation process and identified the microbial and endogenous stimuli that trigger dendritic cell maturation (,[9][10]).

In the late Nineties the Lanzavecchia laboratory determined the mechanism, stoichiometry and kinetics of T cell receptor stimulation and signaling (,[11][12][13]) and discovered a fundamental division of memory T cells into two major subsets of central memory and effector memory and central T cells that play distinct roles in immediate protection and secondary immune responses ([14]).

Starting in 2003, the laboratory developed efficient methods to isolate human monoclonal antibodies as new tools for prophylaxis and therapy of infectious diseases ([15]). Among these is FI6 that neutralizes all influenza A viruses ([16]), MPE8 that neutralizes four different paramyxoviruses ([17]) and mab114 (Ansuvimab) that has been approved for treatment of Ebola infected patients ([18]).

The laboratory also pioneered the use of human monoclonal antibodies as tools for vaccine design, a process dubbed as “analytic vaccinology” (,[19][20]). Basic studies addressed the role of somatic mutations in the development of broadly neutralizing antibodies ([21]) and the relationship between infection and autoimmunity ([22]). The study of the antibody response to the malaria parasite led to the discovery of a new mechanism of antibody diversification through the insertion into antibody genes of DNA encoding pathogen receptors such as LAIR1 ([23][24]).

In 2021, Lanzavecchia and colleagues developed a vaccine that protects animals from Salmonella.[25] Recent highly cited work on

mRNA vaccine-elicited antibodies[26] and the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.[27]

Awards

Honors

Editorial activities

Selected Patents

  • Monoclonal antibody production by EBV transformation of B cells (WO2004076677)
  • Human cytomegalovirus neutralizing antibodies and use thereof (WO2008084410)
  • Neutralizing anti-influenza virus antibodies and uses thereof (WO2010010467)
  • Methods for producing antibodies from plasma cells (WO2010046775)

Selected publications

As of 2023, Lanzavecchia has over 355 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals, with a total of over 130,000 citations (h-index=162). A complete list can be found on Google Scholar.[3]

References

  1. Businesswire
    . Accessed August 2021.
  2. ^ Profile: Antoni Lanazavecchia (2017). Biography. Università della Svizzera italiana. Accessed August 2021.
  3. ^ a b Antonio Lanzavecchia publications indexed by Google Scholar
  4. S2CID 4366150
    .
  5. S2CID 4229494
    .
  6. S2CID 319466
    .
  7. S2CID 4391122
    .
  8. PMID 8145033
    .
  9. PMID 7629501
    .
  10. PMID 15995707
    .
  11. S2CID 4252790
    .
  12. S2CID 45276598
    .
  13. PMID 9924026
    .
  14. S2CID 4378970
    .
  15. PMID 15247913
    .
  16. S2CID 5086468
    .
  17. S2CID 205235089
    .
  18. PMID 26917593
    .
  19. PMID 25453106
    .
  20. PMID 29554084
    .
  21. S2CID 1984683
    .
  22. PMID 22996451
    .
  23. PMID 26700814
    .
  24. PMID 28847005
    .
  25. ^ Science News (2 June 2021). Luring bacteria into a trap. ScienceDaily. Accessed August 2021.
  26. ^ Collier, Dami A.; et al. (2021). "Sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 to mRNA vaccine-elicited antibodies". Nature. 593: 136–141.
  27. ^ Cameroni, Elisabetta; et al. (2022). "Broadly neutralizing antibodies overcome SARS-CoV-2 Omicron antigenic shift". Nature. 602 (7898): 664–670.
  28. ^ "Laureate Prof. Antonio Lanzavecchia, M.D." Jung Stiftung (in German). Retrieved November 28, 2021.
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