Professor Luca Gattinoni has been dedicated to developing curative T-cell-based immunotherapies in advanced cancer patients for over 20 years. Throughout his career a central theme of his research has been to elucidate how the differentiation state of T cells impacts their effectiveness in adoptive T-cell transfer for tumor eradication. His discoveries have fundamentally shaped the current view in the field which now recognizes the superior therapeutic potential of early memory T cells compared to cytotoxic effector T cells (Gattinoni L. et al, J Clin Invest, 2005 and Gattinoni L. et al, Nat Med, 2009).

Within this framework, Professor Gattinoni uncovered a unique subset of minimally differentiated memory T cells characterized by stem cell-like attributes, aptly named stem cell memory T cells (Tscm). And provided the first evidence that these cells mediate superior antitumor responses after adoptive transfer (Gattinoni L, et al. Nat. Med, 2011).