Maria Pia Protti obtained her M.D. degree from the University of Milan, and after 3 years internship/fellowship at Ospedale San Raffaele, she moved to the University of Minnesota for a post-doctoral position. During this period she also obtained a degree in Internal Medicine from the University of Milan. She returned to IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele first as Investigator, and then as head of research Unit. Her scientific interest has focused on autoimmunity, during her post-doc, and tumor immunology, after her appointment at Ospedale San Raffaele. Here, she pioneered a new field of research on the role of CD4+ T cells in tumor immunity (J Exp Med 1999), moving from the setting of tools for the study of tumor-specific CD4+ T cells from human blood (Nat Biotechnol 1999), to the definition of the CD4 epitope repertoire of several tumor antigens (Blood 2003, Cancer Res 2003), the study of the quantity and quality of tumor-specific CD4+ T cells in neoplastic patients (Clin Cancer Res 2006, Cancer Res 2008), and the role of different CD4+ Th cell subsets with identification of mechanisms driving anti- versus pro-tumor Th cell polarization in the tumor microenvironment. Specifically, she established the notion that predominant Th2 inflammation is a major mechanism of tumor immune escape in patients with primary pancreatic cancer (J Exp Med 2011, Cancer Res 2016, J Immunother Cancer 2019, EBiomedicine 2023). Dr. Protti is the author of 80 publications, 1 book and 2 book chapters, with a sum of IF=672, and h-index=37.

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