Direttore del Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale e Chirurgia
[su_expand height=”5″]
Gerry Melino has created the major forum for discussion and innovation in the field of cell death in the last twenty years. In fact, his editorial contribution to the scientific community has been pivotal, being the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of the journals “Cell Death Differentiation” (www.nature.com/cdd) and “Cell Death Disease” (www.nature.com/cddis), of impact factor 8.5 and 6 respectively. His scientific interest focuses upon programmed cell death in epidermal and cancer models, and in particular on the p53 family – p63 and p73, where his contribution has been fundamental.
Citations: 21500 (GS), 17000 (ISI); H-index 72 (GS), 63 (ISI).
Gerry Melino, MD (Rome), PhD (London), Dr Sci hc (St Petersburg), is Head of the Apoptosis and Cancer Laboratory, Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, UK, and Professor of Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Rome-Tor Vergata. He is Founder & Editor-in-Chief of the journals Cell Death Differentiation (www.nature.com/cdd) (impact factor 8.5), Cell Death Disease (www.nature.com/cddis) (impact factor 6.0), member of several other Editorial Boards and Scientific Advisor for several Governmental Institutions. His scientific interest, with over 430 papers (GS: 21500 citations; H-index 72; ISI: 17000 citations; H-index 63), focuses upon programmed cell death in epidermal and neural models, and in particular on the p53 family – p63 and p73. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of Cancer is a major challenge for therapy. Dr Melino focuses on the family members of the tumour suppressor p53, namely p73 and p63. He identified 8 splicing isoforms of p73 (JEM 1998.188:1763), its involvement in DNA damage response (Nature 1999.399:806), transcriptional regulation (JEM 2004.199:1545; MCB 2004.24:10593; PNAS 2004.101:4401; PNAS 2010.107:18061), degradation pathways (EmboJ 2005.24:836; PNAS 2007.104:11280; Cancer Cell 2008.14:10; Oncogene 2009.28:3157 PNAS 2010.107:4902; PNAS 2010.107:12877), and mechanisms of killing (JBC 2004.279:8076). His group has developed knockout mouse models to understand the biology of TAp73 (Genes&Dev 2008.22:2677; Genes&Dev 2012.26:2009) and DNp73 (Genes&Dev 2010.24:549) isoforms, allowing the understanding of their neuronal involvement (PNAS 2011.108: 21093; PNAS 2011.108:21099) as well as in female infertility (Nature Rev MCB 2011.12:259). Concerning the characterization of the evolutionarily-conserved p63 gene, Dr Melino’s pioneering work focuses on skin development (CDD 2006.13:1037; CDD 2011.18:887; JCB 2012.199:347), apoptosis (EmboJ 2005.24:2458), transcriptional regulation (EmboJ 2006.25:5105; JCS 2006.119:4617; PNAS 2007.104:11999; Stem Cells 2011.29:1672), degradation pathway (PNAS 2006.103:12753; PNAS 2007.104:10871), female infertility (Nature Med 2009.15:1179), senescence (PNAS 2012.109:1133) and cancer metastasis (PNAS 2012.109:15312). He previously worked on apoptosis (Nature 1997.388:432; Nature 2000.406:135; Nature 2001.412:23), mainly on transglutaminases’ role in the formation of the cornified envelope in skin, creating mouse models, discovering a new disease (OMIM#144200), and the cause of others (OMIM#606391, OMIM#242300, OMIM#193900, OMIM#606391, OMIM#146550).[/su_expand]