Marco Colonna

Marco Colonna is a Scientific Advisor at Alector. Prior to their current position, Marco was a Research Fellow in Immunology at the National Institutes of Health from October 2009 to August 2014. There, they focused on transcription factors responsible for dendritic cell functions and the role of NF-kB subunits involved in the regulation of in vivo models of inflammations, such as contact hypersensitivity or allergic airway inflammation.

From January 2003 to December 2009, Marco was a Post-doc in Immunology at Washington University in St. Louis. There, they studied signaling proteins involved in the functional activation of human and murine Natural Killer cells. Marco's contributions in NK cell biology are: the analysis of the intracellular signaling pathway in newly identified NK cell activating receptors; the identification of signaling molecules responsible for NK cell development; the discovery of essential mediators for NK cell cytotlitic activity against tumors and viruses; and the characterization of effector molecules exclusively required cytokines production in response to activating receptors in NK cells. Additionally, Marco characterized the molecular mechanism required for the activation of dendritic cells and identified the enzyme phospholipase C gamma (PLCgamma) as a crucial player in the activation of dendritic cells and induction of the adaptive immune response.

Marco Colonna was awarded a PhD in Immunology from Sapienza Università di Roma.