Emilio Hirsch

Emilio Hirsch is Professor of Biology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Torino. His most important contributions are in the field of signal transduction mediated by phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3K). He demonstrated the role of PI3Kgamma in chemotaxis of leukocytes (Science 2000; PNAS 2007, Blood 2012). He showed that selected PI3K isoforms represent valuable drug targets in inflammation (Immunity 2002), cancer (Sci Signal 2008) and cardiovascular diseases (Circulation 2011, 2012; Sci Transl Med 2022). He helped Merck-Serono to develop the first isoform selective PI3Kgamma inhibitor (Nat Med 2005), active in the treatment of arthritis. He further showed that PI3Kgamma inhibitors can be useful in cancer (Cancer Cell 2011a, 2011b, 2012). While studying genetic models of PI3K inhibition he serendipitously found that PI3Ks have a moonlighting function as scaffold proteins (TiBS 2009). He demonstrated that PI3Kbeta is a scaffold controlling receptor endocytosis (Sci Signal 2008) and that PI3Kgamma interacts with PKA to integrate PI3K and cAMP signaling (Cell 2004; Mol Cell 2011; Circulation 2012). More recently, he shifted his attention to class II PI3Ks. He contributed to the definition of the catalytic role of PI3KC2alpha in endocytosis (Nature 2013) and is currently characterizing PI3KC2alpha functions (Cancer Cell 2017, Science 2021).