Massimo Trucco, M.D., joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1986 as an Associate Professor within the Departments of Pathology and Pediatrics and a member of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). In 1991, he was appointed Hillman Professor of Pediatric Immunology and Head of the Division of Immunogenetics within the Department of Pediatrics. This appointment is associated with the Endowment Chair in Pediatric Immunology. Currently, in addition to holding these positions, Dr. Trucco is the Director of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Histocompatibility Center and served as the Director of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Center for Gene Therapy Approaches to Type 1 Diabetes from 1999-2004. In 2000, he became Founder and Director of the Pediatric Research Section of the University of Pittsburgh Diabetes Institute.
Dr. Trucco holds a B.A. in Latin and Ancient Greek and received his M.D. from the University of Torino in 1974. Subsequently, he held the positions of Assistant Professor within the Institute of Medical Genetics at the University of Torino School of Medicine, in Torino, Italy; Visiting Assistant Professor at the MRC Laboratories of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, England; and Staff Member of the Basel Institute for Immunology, in Basel, Switzerland. Immediately prior to his arrival at the university, he was an Assistant Professor at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Throughout his career, Dr. Trucco has been a member of several professional and scientific societies. Among his list of memberships, he is a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Diabetes Association, American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, Italian Society of Immunology and Immunopathology, Italian Society of Medical Genetics and New York Academy of Science.
For his research efforts, Dr. Trucco has been featured in several publications and has been the recipient of numerous awards. Since joining the university faculty, he has been awarded the William Stadie Award (1993) from the American Diabetes Association, the University of Michigan-Sandoz Prize (1993), and the 1996 Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award from the University of Pittsburgh. Most recently he was awarded with a prestigious Carnegie Science Award in the area of Life Sciences (2011).
Currently, Dr. Trucco has focused his efforts on basic research studying the etiology and possible treatments of type 1 diabetes. The goal is to see some protocols, defined on animal models and transferred to clinical trials, successfully reducing the symptoms and the complications of this disease. One example is the autotransplant of immunologically compromised dendritic cells to block the autoimmune attack on the beta cells of the pancreas, an NIH-supported, FDA and IRB-approved protocol, which already concluded the Phase I Trial.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Dr. Massimo Trucco
Phone: (412) 692-6570
Email: mnt@pitt.edu