Professor Mantovani receives the Milstein Award

All November 8, 2015
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mantovani1Alberto Mantovani, Scientific Director of and Professor at University, has received the Milstein Award, the most important international award forresearchon cytokines andinterferon. The Awards have been presented atthe annual meeting of theInternational Cytokine & Interferon Society (ICIS) on October 11th.

What are cytokines?

Cytokines are small proteins generated by different types of cells and able to bindspecific receptors on the cell membrane and to give cells specific instructions as the stimulus ofgrowing, differentiating or dying. Immune-generated cytokines, as Գٱܰ쾱ԱԻ𳾴ǰ쾱Ա, play a key role in the regulation and activation of our defenses and in inflammation.

Prof Mantovani has contributed to establish the function of interleukine-6 (IL-6) during the transition from acute to chronic inflammation. Mantovani and his team have also identified and explained how IL-1decoyreceptorworks: the receptor bindsthe protein without allowing the signal emission and so inhibiting its action. This has had important clinical consequences: today it is in fact possible to stop inflammatory cytokines by convertingtheir receptors into decoy receptors.

Alberto Mantovani‘s research has always been focused on immune defense mechanisms, especially the most primitives (innate immunity). In the late ‘70s his studies demonstrated the protumor function of tumor-associated macrophages, thus proving the existence of a inflammation-cancer connection.

Prof. Mantovani also discovered PTX3,a paradigm for humoral innate immunity which acts as an extrinsic oncosuppressor regulating complement and macrophage driven tumor promoting inflammation. Clinical trials have already been activated.

About the Milstein Award

The for Excellence in Interferon and Cytokine Research wasestablished in 1988, two years after interferon was first approved for the treatment of hairy cell leukemia by Philip, Vivian e Connie Milstein, a family of philanthropists internationallyknown for itssupport to the researchon cytokines andinterferon.

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