Aurelio Lorico's Biography

Aurelio Lorico, Senior Scientist, Mediterranean Institute of Oncology Foundation Italy

Aurelio Lorico did his post-doc at Yale University, mentored in the pharmacology field by Alan Sartorelli. Later, as Junior Research Faculty at Yale he clarified the biological function(s) of the MRP1 gene by generating and characterizing MRP1 knockout mice and cell lines. After 8 years at Yale, he became senior scientist at the Norwegian Cancer Center in Oslo, working on cancer drug resistance and designing new strategies for gene therapy of hereditary diseases. Back to the US, he has been working on cell-to-cell communication in the tumor microenvironment, particularly cell-cell fusion and extracellular vesicles, and on the development of innovative therapeutic strategies for breast cancer, melanoma and glioblastoma. His lab has recently discovered spathasomes, organelles constituted by Rab7+ late endosomes entering into nuclear envelope invaginations that mediate the nuclear translocation of EV-derived biomaterials, such as proteins and RNA.