Congratulations to Professor Chiara Bonini for receiving the Outstanding Achievement Award at the annual meeting of the European Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ESGCT), which took place in Rome last 22-24 October. The ESGCT assigns every year the prestigious award to researchers whose work has been impactful in the gene and cell therapy field.

A PIONEER IN THE CLINICAL USE OF CELL-BASED GENE THERAPY FOR CANCER

Chiara Bonini received her Medical Degree from the Università degli Studi in Milan, in 1994. She  then spent two years as a postdoc in the Greenberg’s Lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research, in Seattle (US), and in 2000 she became Group Leader of the Experimental Hematology Unit at IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital. Currently, she is also Full Professor at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.

Professor Bonini pioneered the development of the first therapy based on genetically engineered lymphocytes, which was approved by the European Medical Agency to treat cancer in the clinical practice. Having lonstanding experience in cancer immunotherapy, her group was the first to develop the TCR gene editing approach to permanently redirect specificity and function of T-lymphocytes against tumors. Additionally, part of her team is dedicated to studying the immunological correlates with clinical outcome in the context of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.