Emanuele Andreano of Toscana Life Sciences among the 15 ‘rising stars’ of international immunology

Emanuele Andreano, 32 year old researcherresponsible for the Neisseria gonorrhoeae and COVID-19 project at the MAD Lab of the Toscana Life Sciences Foundation, was selected by the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) among the 15rising stars‘internationals in the field of immunology. The prestigious recognition comes from the IUIS, a union that brings together 84 companies among the national and associated members of countries across Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia-Oceania and of which the United States and Canada are also direct members. The International Union of Immunological Societies represents more than 60,000 immunologists worldwide, with active collaborations with international scientific bodies such as the International Council for Science (ICS) and the World Health Organization (WHO). An award that will allow Emanuele Andreano to participate in the IUIS 2023 International Congress, a world-leading conference in the field of immunology, scheduled from 27 November to 2 December in South Africa and which every three years brings together immunologists from the world of healthcare, industry, academia and independent research organizations.

Thanks to the prestigious Emanuele Andreano award will have the opportunity to present the lines of research carried out within the Foundation’s laboratories in front of two Nobel Prize winners (the American immunologist James P. Allison and the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier) and the main international experts in the field of immunology Toscana Life Sciences, as well as representing the entire Tuscan life sciences ecosystem, where Emanuele Andreano trained, obtaining a degree in biotechnology at the University of Siena. An educational and professional path continued abroad with a master’s degree in immunobiology at the University of Newcastle, in the United Kingdom, before returning to Italy where Andreano started an industrial doctorate program between the University of Siena and Glaxo Smith Klyne (GSK) Vaccines Siena and Rockville, USA. After obtaining his doctorate in 2019, Emanuele Andreano began his post-doctoral career at the TLS Foundation where, together with Prof. Rino Rappuoli and Dr. Claudia Sala, he contributed to the birth of Monoclonal Antibody Discovery (MAD) Lab, a laboratory that currently has almost 30 researchers. The MAD Lab, which began its research activity thanks to an ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euros, today conducts research on important global health challenges, such as the fight against emerging viruses (SARS-CoV-2 and Monkeypox) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (such as Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Shigella and Klebsiella pneumoniae) identifying human monoclonal antibodies for the development of new therapeutic and preventive measures to combat infectious diseases.

“It is a great honor to have been selected by the Union of Immunological Societies – comments Emanuele Andreano, researcher at the MAD Lab of TLS – this is an important recognition that rewards the work of the entire research group. An achievement that I am happy to share with the entire team, a cornerstone of the success of our work on important public health challenges such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Our work and dedication have allowed us to achieve important results published in prestigious journals such as Cell, Nature and PNAS. Even today, we continue to carry out our research to understand the evolution of people’s immune responses and to identify increasingly powerful monoclonal antibodies to develop effective therapies that can save lives around the world.”

Emanuele Andreano has identified numerous monoclonal antibodies to combat pathogens that pose serious global health threats such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), antimicrobial-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, SARS-CoV-2, and more recently Monkeypox virus. Your work on SARS-CoV-2 led to the isolation of over 10,000 human monoclonal antibodies and the identification of MAD0004J08, a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of COVID-19. For this work Emanuele Andreano was awarded the “COVID-19 Heroes Award” by his alma mater Newcastle University. Emanuele Andreano was the first author of publications in high-level journals such as PNAS, Cell, Nature Medicine and Nature.