Alessandro Sette is an Italian immunologist. He was born on August 11, 1960, in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, to Pietro Sette, a prominent Italian businessman and politician, and Renata Sette. Sette is a professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI). He is an adjunct professor at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

. Sette studies the specific

epitope An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells. The epitope is the specific piece of the antigen to which an antibody binds. The p ...

s that the immune system recognizes in cancer, autoimmunity, allergy, and infectious diseases. In 1988, Sette moved to San Diego to conduct research at San Diego biotech Cytel. He then co-founded Epimmune. In 2003, Sette joined the faculty of La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Sette co-leads the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), an

NIAID The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, ) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID' ...

-funded online database that catalogues

s involved in immune system recognition of allergens, infectious diseases, autoantigens, and transplanted tissue in humans and various species. In 2020, Sette published the first study of

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...

epitopes targeted by the human immune system. He has co-led research into

CD8+ A cytotoxic T cell (also known as TC, cytotoxic T lymphocyte, CTL, T-killer cell, cytolytic T cell, CD8+ T-cell or killer T cell) is a T lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) that kills cancer cells, cells that are infected by intracellular pa ...

and

CD4+ In molecular biology, CD4 (cluster of differentiation 4) is a glycoprotein that serves as a co-receptor for the T-cell receptor (TCR). CD4 is found on the surface of immune cells such as T helper cells, monocytes, macrophages, and dendritic ...

T cell responses in

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

patients and studied CD8+ T cell cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes and other coronaviruses.

Education

Sette received his

Laurea In Italy, the ''laurea'' is the main post-secondary academic degree. The name originally referred literally to the laurel wreath, since ancient times a sign of honor and now worn by Italian students right after their official graduation ceremony ...

in Biological Sciences from the University of Rome, Italy, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Immunology with Luciano Adorini at the C.R.E. Casaccia in Rome, Italy, and Howard Grey at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver, Colorado.

Publications/patents

Sette is a coauthor of over 900 peer-reviewed publications, and is an inventor on 41 US issued patents. He has a H-factor of 182, and is identified by Clarivate as a highly cited researcher.

Awards and honors

The Scripps Research Institute
Adjunct Faculty # American Association of Immunologists Investigator Award (1995) # International Immunomics and Immmunogenics Society Award (2006) # Named as one of th
top 400 influential researchers
in the last 15 years (2013) # 10th Annua
ViE Vaccine Industry Excellence Award
(2017) # Fellow
American Association for the Advancement of Science
(2020) # Ranked 4th amongs
Italian Scientists in Biomedical Sciences
(2021) # Honorary Member, Accademia Medica di Roma (2021) # Gold Medal
Italian Society of Internal Medicine
(2021) # Fellow
Sigma Xi The Scientific Research Honor Society
(2021)
Boulle-SEI
International Award (Alicante, Spain 2021) # Fellow
American Academy of Microbiology
(2023) # Member
Scientific Council of Italian Scientists & Scholars in North America Foundation
ISSNAF (2023) # Ranked 3rd amongs
Italian Scientists in Biomedical Sciences
(2023)

Research

In the mid-80s, at the same time as

Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which ...

in Emil Unanue’s lab, Sette together with Soren Buus in Howard Grey’s lab reported the first direct evidence that MHC molecules’ function is to bind antigenic peptides and present them to the T cell receptor, which triggers a T cell response. Follow-up work explained MHC restriction. In 1989, utilizing an

Apple IIe The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The ''e'' in the name stands for ''enhanced'', referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in ...

, Sette wrote the first algorithm to predict peptide binding to two murine MHC alleles and over the course of the next 25 years, he defined motifs associated with over one hundred different class I and class II MHC variants expressed in humans, chimps, macaques, gorilla, horse, and mice. He discovered and characterized how MHC variants can be grouped according to broad common functional specificities (MHC supertypes), greatly facilitating epitope classification, characterization and understanding the basic rules of epitope-MHC interactions. Contrary to the then wide-held assumption that T cell receptors (TCR) solely function as on/off switches, Sette showed that depending on the affinity of the interaction, TCR engagement could result in inhibition of T cell activation, normal activation, or heteroclitic stimulation and differential signaling, in a mechanism that is known as TCR antagonism. This discovery had a profound influence on the understanding of the impact of epitope analogs on antigen recognition, development of more potent cancer antigens, and basic studies on positive and negative selection. Sette is using epitopes as specific probes to define the understanding of immune responses to many different targets, from infectious diseases such as COVID-19, tuberculosis, whooping cough, dengue or Zika, to allergies and asthma caused by pollens, cockroaches and dust mites, to vaccines, autoimmunity and neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Sette's group was first to define successful adaptive response to SARS-CoV-2, by studying mild convalescent samples, and defined durability of immune memory in natural infection and

vaccination Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating ...

. We reported the phenomenon of

preexisting immune memory in unexposed donors, and demonstrated its influence on vaccination outcomes. We also demonstrated that T cell responses are largely preserved in terms of recognition of SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron and Delta.

References

External links

* * *
"ISSNAF Story with Alessandro Sette, La Jolla Institute for Immunology"
''YouTube''. Barbara Rosaria. February 8, 2023 {{DEFAULTSORT:Sette, Alessandro Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Italian immunologists University of California, San Diego faculty 1960 births