Luigi Naldini

Luigi Naldini is the Director of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy and professor at the San Raffaele University in Milan, Italy. For the past 25 years, he has pioneered the development and applications of lentiviral vectors for gene transfer, which have become one of the most widely used tools in biomedical research and, upon recently entering clinical testing, are providing a long-sought hope of cures for several currently untreatable and otherwise deadly human diseases. Throughout this time, he has continued to investigate new strategies to overcome the major hurdles to safe and effective gene transfer, bringing about innovative solutions that not only are being translated into new therapeutic strategies for genetic disease and cancer, but have also allowed novel insights into hematopoietic stem cell function, induction of immunological tolerance, and tumor angiogenesis. His work also contributed to advance the use of artificial nucleases for targeted genome editing in cell and gene therapy. In his early career, he identified the ligand for the Met receptor with hepatocyte growth factor. Has published 272 scientific papers cited >39,700 times. SCOPUS Author h-index: 93.

Luigi received his medical degree from the University of Torino, Italy, and his PhD from the University of Rome.