Mariagrazia Pizza | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | University of Naples Federico II |
Awards | EMBO Member (2000) [1] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Vaccines Pathogenesis [2] |
Institutions |
Mariagrazia Pizza MAE is an Italian vaccine researcher who is a professor at Imperial College London. [2] [4] She worked as Senior Scientific Director for Bacterial Vaccines at GSK plc. [5] [6] She was involved with the development of the first pertussis vaccine. In 2023, she was awarded the IVI-SK bioscience Park MahnHoon Award. [7]
Pizza was born in Eboli, Italy and lived there until 1980. [8] She studied chemistry and pharmaceutical science at the University of Naples Federico II. [9] Her dissertation used nuclear magnetic resonance to explore the structure of opioid peptides. [9] When a family member became ill, she decided to learn more about pharmaceutical design. She moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, where she learnt molecular biology and engineering. [9]
Pizza has focused on the design and development of new vaccines. In 1986, she joined Sclavo, a vaccine research centre in Siena. She spent six years there, contributing to the development of the first pertussis vaccine, [9] which was able to protect infants, and was safer and more immuno-active than other pertussis vaccines on the market. [9] Sclavo was sold to Chiron, which was eventually acquired by Novartis. Motivated by their success and advances in whole genome sequencing, Pizza started working on a Meningococcal vaccine. [9] [10] She joined GSK plc in 2016. [8]
In 2023, Pizza joined the faculty at Imperial College London [ citation needed ]. She is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester. [3]
Pizza has two children. [9]
Neisseria is a large genus of bacteria that colonize the mucosal surfaces of many animals. Of the 11 species that colonize humans, only two are pathogens, N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae.
Marco A. Marra is a Distinguished Scientist and Director of Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre at the BC Cancer Research Centre and Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He also serves as UBC Canada Research Chair in Genome Science for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and is an inductee in the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Marra has been instrumental in bringing genome science to Canada by demonstrating the pivotal role that genomics can play in human health and disease research.
A toxoid is an inactivated toxin whose toxicity has been suppressed either by chemical (formalin) or heat treatment, while other properties, typically immunogenicity, are maintained. Toxins are secreted by bacteria, whereas toxoids are altered form of toxins; toxoids are not secreted by bacteria. Thus, when used during vaccination, an immune response is mounted and immunological memory is formed against the molecular markers of the toxoid without resulting in toxin-induced illness. Such a preparation is also known as an anatoxin. There are toxoids for prevention of diphtheria, tetanus and botulism.
Rino Rappuoli is an Italian immunologist. He is the head of vaccine research and development (R&D) at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Vaccines. Previously, he has served as visiting scientist at Rockefeller University and Harvard Medical School and held roles at Sclavo, Vaccine Research and CSO, Chiron Corporation, and Novartis Vaccines.
Neisseria meningitidis, often referred to as the meningococcus, is a Gram-negative bacterium that can cause meningitis and other forms of meningococcal disease such as meningococcemia, a life-threatening sepsis. The bacterium is referred to as a coccus because it is round, and more specifically a diplococcus because of its tendency to form pairs.
Pertussis toxin (PT) is a protein-based AB5-type exotoxin produced by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis, which causes whooping cough. PT is involved in the colonization of the respiratory tract and the establishment of infection. Research suggests PT may have a therapeutic role in treating a number of common human ailments, including hypertension, viral infection, and autoimmunity.
Bordetella pertussis is a Gram-negative, aerobic, pathogenic, encapsulated coccobacillus bacterium of the genus Bordetella, and the causative agent of pertussis or whooping cough. Its virulence factors include pertussis toxin, adenylate cyclase toxin, filamentous hæmagglutinin, pertactin, fimbria, and tracheal cytotoxin.
Theileria is a genus of parasites that belongs to the phylum Apicomplexa, and is closely related to Plasmodium. Two Theileria species, T. annulata and T. parva, are important cattle parasites. T. annulata causes tropical theileriosis and T. parva causes East Coast fever. Theileria species are transmitted by ticks. The genomes of T. orientalis Shintoku, Theileria equi WA, Theileria annulata Ankara and Theileria parva Muguga have been sequenced and published.
Joachim Wilhelm "Jo" Messing was a German-American biologist who was a professor of molecular biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.
Reverse vaccinology is an improvement of vaccinology that employs bioinformatics and reverse pharmacology practices, pioneered by Rino Rappuoli and first used against Serogroup B meningococcus. Since then, it has been used on several other bacterial vaccines.
Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organism's chromosomal DNA as well as DNA contained in the mitochondria and, for plants, in the chloroplast.
Pathogenomics is a field which uses high-throughput screening technology and bioinformatics to study encoded microbe resistance, as well as virulence factors (VFs), which enable a microorganism to infect a host and possibly cause disease. This includes studying genomes of pathogens which cannot be cultured outside of a host. In the past, researchers and medical professionals found it difficult to study and understand pathogenic traits of infectious organisms. With newer technology, pathogen genomes can be identified and sequenced in a much shorter time and at a lower cost, thus improving the ability to diagnose, treat, and even predict and prevent pathogenic infections and disease. It has also allowed researchers to better understand genome evolution events - gene loss, gain, duplication, rearrangement - and how those events impact pathogen resistance and ability to cause disease. This influx of information has created a need for bioinformatics tools and databases to analyze and make the vast amounts of data accessible to researchers, and it has raised ethical questions about the wisdom of reconstructing previously extinct and deadly pathogens in order to better understand virulence.
Niyaz Ahmed is an Indian molecular epidemiologist, professor of microbial sciences, genomicist, and a veterinarian by training, based in Hyderabad.
Immunomics is the study of immune system regulation and response to pathogens using genome-wide approaches. With the rise of genomic and proteomic technologies, scientists have been able to visualize biological networks and infer interrelationships between genes and/or proteins; recently, these technologies have been used to help better understand how the immune system functions and how it is regulated. Two thirds of the genome is active in one or more immune cell types and less than 1% of genes are uniquely expressed in a given type of cell. Therefore, it is critical that the expression patterns of these immune cell types be deciphered in the context of a network, and not as an individual, so that their roles be correctly characterized and related to one another. Defects of the immune system such as autoimmune diseases, immunodeficiency, and malignancies can benefit from genomic insights on pathological processes. For example, analyzing the systematic variation of gene expression can relate these patterns with specific diseases and gene networks important for immune functions.
John R. Carlson is an American biologist and professor. He currently holds the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Eric Emil Schadt is an American mathematician and computational biologist. He is founder and former chief executive officer of Sema4, a patient-centered health intelligence company, and dean for precision medicine and Mount Sinai Professor in Predictive Health and Computational Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He was previously founding director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology and chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomics Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Debasis Dash is an Indian computational biologist and chief scientist at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB). Known for his research on proteomics and Big Data and Artificial Intelligence studies, his studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 120 of them. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2014. He was appointed as the director of Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar on 18 May 2023.
Genome Informatics is a scientific study of information processing in genomes.
Vaccine resistance is the evolutionary adaptation of pathogens to infect and spread through vaccinated individuals, analogous to antimicrobial resistance. It concerns both human and animal vaccines. Although the emergence of a number of vaccine resistant pathogens has been well documented, this phenomenon is nevertheless much more rare and less of a concern than antimicrobial resistance.
Dan M. Granoff is an infectious disease physician-scientist who was named the 2014 Maurice Hilleman/Merck Laureate by the American Society for Microbiology for outstanding contributions to vaccine discovery and development. Beginning in 2011, Granoff held the Clorox Foundation Endowed Chair and was director of the Center of Immunobiology and Vaccine Development at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. His work increased understanding of basic mechanisms of human immunity to encapsulated bacteria, and furthered development of vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) and Neisseria meningitidis.