With sadness and sorrow, I mourn for Dr. Giovanna Tosi who passed away in july 20, 2016 at the age of 52, after a long disease. Dr. Tosi was assistant professor of Immunology at the University of Insubria, Varese. She leaves her old mother Graziella and three sisters, Flavia, Elena and Adriana.
I met Giovanna in 1988 when I came back to Italy after a long stay abroad. She had just obtained the master degree in Biology at the University of Padova and, as young PhD student, was initiating her research career in Immunology at the University of Verona. It was not difficult to realize soon how sharp was that girl in thinking, planning and performing science. She rapidly joined my group and she remained with me ever since, becoming over the years my most important collaborator.
Giovanna was a brilliant immunogeneticist. She dedicated her first years of research to studying the genetic association of type 1 diabetes to HLA class II polymorphism, contributing to clarify the importance of the combination of both DQA and DQB specific alleles in generating the strongest susceptibility to the disease (1)
She then became interested in the regulation of the expression of HLA class II genes in diseases and particularly in infections by human retroviruses. She was the first to show, in a series of papers between 2000 and 2002, that the HIV Tat transactivator could be modulated in its function by the major regulator of HLA class II expression, the CIITA transactivator encoded by the AIR-1 locus discovered in the laboratory (2, 3). This paved the way for the identification of CIITA as a restriction factor for human retrovirus.
Indeed those first evidences were soon followed by the Giovanna’s seminal discovery that CIITA acts as a restriction factor also for human oncogenic retroviruses HTLV-2 and HTLV-1, utilizing a similar, although not identical, mechanism of inhibition of the function of the HTLV-2 and HTLV-1 transactivators Tax-2 and Tax-1, respectively (4-6)
Most recently, she discovered that CIITA could block also the Tax-1-dependent NF-kB constitutive activation in HTLV-1 infected cells, a major mechanim of neoplastic transformation by HTLV-1 leading to Adult T cell Leukemia, thus opening the way for future new strategies to counteract virus-mediated oncogenesis (7).
Giovanna was among the first to envisage that the genetic manipulation of tumor cells with CIITA may not only render tumor cells MHC class II-positive but also modify their immunogenic characteristics and induce them to act as surrogate antigen presenting cells of their own tumor antigens in vivo. This hypothesis was verified in a series of seminal experiments in the mouse model and has served to propose a novel approach for anti-tumor vaccines (8) that is now part of a collaborative project granted by the European Community (9).
Despite the rapid progression of the disease in the last few months, Giovanna continued to work in the lab and to teach Immunology to her beloved students at the medical school, with unbeatable enthusiasm. She leaves us with a scientific, moral and ethical legacy that will last forever.
- Tosi G., A. Facchin, L. Pinelli, R.S. Accolla. 1994. Diabetes Care, 17: 1045-1049.
- Tosi G., A. De Lerma Barbaro, A. D’Agostino, M.T. Valle, A.M. Megiovanni, F. Manca, A. Caputo, G. Barbanti-Brodano, R.S. Accolla. 2000. Eur. J. Immunol. 30: 19-28.
- Accolla, R.S., S. Mazza, A. De Lerma Barbaro, A. De Maria, G. Tosi. 2002. Eur. J. Immunol. 32: 2783-2791.
- Casoli, C., A. De Lerma Barbaro, E. Pilotti, U. Bertazzoni, G. Tosi, R.S. Accolla. 2004. Blood, 2004, 103: 995-1001
- Tosi, G., E. Pilotti, L. Mortara, A. De Lerma Barbaro, C. Casoli, R.S. Accolla. 2006. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 103: 12861-12866.
- Tosi, G., G. Forlani, V. Andresen, M. Turci, U. Bertazzoni, G. Franchini, G. Poli, and R. S. Accolla. 2011. J. Virol., 85: 10719-10729
- Forla.ni G, R. Abdallah , R.S. Accolla, G. Tosi. 2016. J Virol. 90:3708-3721
- Accolla R.S., Lombardo L., Abdallah R., Raval G., Forlani G., Tosi G. 2014. Front Oncol, 4:32, doi: 10.3389/fonc.2014.00032
- http://www.hepavac.eu/
