Claudio de Virgilio
Biographical sketch:
Claudio De Virgilio studied biology at the University of Basel (Switzerland), where he did his diploma work on trehalose metabolism in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. After this short encounter with fission yeast, he continued to study the role of trehalose for the development of thermotolerance in budding yeast (i.e. Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and obtained his Ph.D. in 1993. In 1998, following postdoctoral studies on yeast cell polarity in the laboratory of John Pringle at the University of Chapel Hill (North Carolina, USA), Claudio De Virgilio became an independent group leader and lecturer at the University of Basel. In 2001, he was nominated Swiss National Foundation Professor and joined the Faculty of Medicine in Geneva, where he developed his passion for signalling pathways that control entry into and exit from G0 in yeast. Since 2007, he pursues his research as full professor at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). In this context, his studies (and the ones of others) have uncovered that the nutrient-regulated hub TORC1 (for target of rapamycin complex 1) orchestrates both entry into and exit from G0. His current research is specifically focused on the elucidation of both the mechanisms that regulate TORC1 activity and the nature of the effectors that are regulated by TORC1 in yeast. Notably, hyperactivation of mammalian TORC1 (mTORC1) has been implicated in a number of cancers and cancer predisposition hypertrophic syndromes. Identification of the conserved pathways that impinge on, or that are regulated by TORC1, are therefore likely to significantly contribute not only to the basic understanding of these fundamental processes, but also to the development of both diagnostic and therapeutic tools for the treatment of diseases associated with hyperactivated mTORC1.
