 | Dr. Pietro De Camilli |
Dr. Pietro De Camilli, the newly named Eugene Higgins Professor of Cell Biology, conducts research on the function of synapses, the specialized structures of the nervous system where signals are transmitted from one neuron to another.
The studies by De Camilli, who is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), have advanced knowledge of the mechanism of neurotransmitter secretion and provided new insight into fundamental mechanisms through which all cells secrete substances and take up material from the extracellular media.
His laboratory also investigates human diseases of the nervous system involving autoimmunity directed against synaptic proteins. One of these is Stiff-Man syndrome, a rare but severe nervous system disease frequently associated with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and, in rare cases, with breast cancer. De Camilli's studies in this area found that Stiff-Man syndrome correlates with the presence of autoantibodies directed against the presynaptic proteins glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) or amphiphysin. This finding enhanced an understanding of why patients with Stiff-Man syndrome often have insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus; GAD is also an autoantigen in this type of diabetes.
A native of Italy, De Camilli studied at the Lyceum Manzoni in Milan and earned his M.D. degree from the University of Milano. He obtained a postgraduate degree in medical endocrinology from the University of Pavia in Italy. He was an assistant professor at the University of Milano 1972-1978 before becoming a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology at the Yale School of Medicine. He returned to the University of Milano in 1981 as an associate professor and then was a visiting professor at The Rockefeller University in New York before being named a tenured associate professor in Yale's Department of Cell Biology and Section of Molecular Neurobiology in 1988. He was named a full professor in the cell biology department and an HHMI investigator in 1992, and chaired the cell biology department from 1997 to 2000.
Elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in 2001, De Camilli was awarded the Max-Planck Research Prize in 1990. His other honors include the Lingenstein Neuroscience Award, a fellowship from the Muscular Dystrophy Association of America and the McKnight Research Project Award.
The Yale researcher has served on numerous University committees and is currently a member of the search committee for a new medical school dean. He is a member of the American Society for Cell Biology and the Society for Neuroscience.
T H I S
De Camilli named Eugene Higgins
Professor of Cell Biology
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