Gabriella Campadelli-fiume BSc, PhD

Gabriella Campadelli-Fiume earned her Science Doctor (1968) and Specialization in Virology (1972) degrees at the University of Bologna. Currently, Dr. Campadelli-Fiume is a Professor of Virology at the University of Bologna, Italy. She is a founding member of the Italian Society of Virology, European Society of Virology, and European Academy of Microbiology, a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Virology, and has co-organized a number of international meetings.

Her work focuses on HSV entry into the cell, virus-induced cell fusion, and virus exit out of the cell. She discovered that HSV induces dramatic modifications to the exocytic pathway, Golgi apparatus, and cytoskeleton, and later identified the modified multivesicular bodies as the site of HSV assembly. She contributed to defining the cell and viral factors required for HSV penetration of human cells. Years ago, she demonstrated that HSV gD serves as receptor-binding glycoprotein; she independently discovered nectin1 as an HSV receptor, and later found that gD serves as the trigger of fusion, by forming complexes with gH/gL and GB. Recently, she identified avb3-integrin as a determinant in the HSV choice of the entry pathway. She developed a strategy to convert HSV into an oncolytic agent, by retargeting HSV tropism to selected receptors present in tumor cells and demonstrated the oncolytic activity of the retargeted onco-HSV in mice.