Endocrine Abstracts

Volume 11

Embryonic stem cells

M Trucco, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States. Abstract

Massimo Trucco graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Turin, Italy in 1974. From the Institute of Medical Genetics, where he learned the basis of human histocompatibility, he went to Cambridge, UK to work with Cesar Milstein (1977). He then moved to the Basel Institute of Immunology, then directed by Niels Jerne, where he published the characterization of the first monoclonal antibodies specifically directed against HLA molecules. In 1981, Dr Trucco moved to the University of Pennsylvania, where he clarified the molecular basis of HLA-DQ polymorphism. Once at the University of Pittsburgh (1986), in collaboration with Hugh McDevitt, Stanford, he studied the influence of HLA-DQ alleles as potential genetic markers for susceptibility/resistance to autoimmune diseases, like type 1 diabetes, and the transduction molecules of NK cells. In 1991, he became the Hillman Professor of Pediatric Immunology and was honored with the Cristobal Diaz Prize at the International Diabetes Federation Congress. The William Stadie Award of the American Diabetes Association and the University of Michigan Sandoz Prize were received in 1993, while in 1996 the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Award was given for his work on the etiology of type 1 diabetes.