Cesare Montecucco

Cesare Montecucco ( born 1 November 1947 in Trento ) is an Italian biologist and pathologist. He chairs the Department of Biomedical Research, University of Padua, and deals with diseases that are caused by pathogenic bacteria. 2011 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize he was awarded.

Training

Cesare Montecucco first studied chemistry at the University of Padua and graduated in 1971 with a degree in Organic Chemistry from trade. From 1971 to 1973 he made ​​the military service from the Italian Navy and wrote subsequently to 1975 - also in Padua - in biology his doctoral thesis on the structure of the mitochondrial ATP synthase. As a post-doctoral researcher from 1976 to 1977, he then worked at the University of Cambridge, later followed by other abroad in Paris at the Pasteur Institute in Utrecht, at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory ( EMBL) in Heidelberg and at the Universidad de Costa Rica. Since 1978 he is professor of pathology and since 2004 Vice- Director of the Scuola Galileiana in Padua.

Research Topics

Montecucco explored, among other things, the manner in which the nerve toxin of the tetanus bacterium Clostridium tetani, the showy, spasmodic rigidity of the muscles ( " lockjaw " ) causes. He showed that the tetanus neurotoxin specific vesicles prevents the synapses of nerve cells to release neurotransmitters, which are important for the conduction of nerve cell to nerve cell. Montecucco 1986 postulated that both the tetanus neurotoxin and the botulinum toxin component of the specific proteins involved in the release splits, thereby causing potentially lethal blockage. Between 1991 and 1994, he demonstrated that it is in the blocked protein is VAMP / synaptobrevin from the group of SNARE proteins; this group of proteins mediates the contact and fusion of the vesicle membrane with the membrane of the target cell. In announcing the award of the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for 2011, it said in a statement the Paul Ehrlich Foundation, Montecuccos discovery is true, " as a breakthrough in the understanding of transport processes between cells."

From 1993 to 2000, he explored the entzündungsfördende vakuolisierende cytotoxin ( VacA gene product) of Helicobacter pylori and showed that it causes the formation of vacuoles in the epithelial cells of the stomach, which fill with stomach acid and gradually destroy the stomach tissue. Realizing this, one of the components of a three - component vaccine was developed by Novartis, in a clinical trial ( Phase II) was tested in 2011.

In the following years further study the mode of action of anthrax and certain snake venoms ( phospholipase A ₂) were considered.

Honors

For his contributions in the field of infectious diseases Montecucco was honored in 1993 with the Shipley Award from the Harvard Medical School. In 1998 he was awarded the prize of the Italian Consortium for Biotechnology ( Consorzio italiano delle Biotecnologie ), in 2000 the Prize of the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology, the 2003 Premio Masi per la Civilizations of Veneta, 2004 Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for Medicine - and 2009 the Redi Award from the International Society on Toxicology (IST ) and the Paul Harris Award from the Rotary Club. 2011 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize he was presented in the Frankfurt St. Paul's Church.