Ticino, Switzerland
Antonio Lanzavecchia is known for his work on antigen presentation, T cell activation, immunological memory and human monoclonal antibodies. Lanzavecchia obtained a medical degree from the University of Pavia, where he specialised in paediatrics and in infectious diseases. Since 1983 he works in Switzerland, first as a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology and since 2000 as the founding director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona. Lanzavecchia has been professor of Immunology at the University of Genova and Siena and at the Swiss Federal Institute of technology, ETH Zürich. He is member of the EMBO, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and is honorary member of the American Society for Immunology, of the Swiss Society of Immunology and of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2016 he has been elected as international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He received the EMBO gold Medal, the Cloetta prize, the Robert Koch prize, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur prize and the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. Lanzavecchia is the scientific Founder of Humabs Biomed, now a subsidiary of Vir Biotecnology and is currently SVP and Senior Research fellow at Vir Biotecnology. His academic research continues at the INGM. Specialties: Medicine Infectious diseases Immunology
Humabs is a privately owned Switzerland-based company that has developed a next-generation fully human monoclonal antibody platform within the Institute for Research in Biomedicine led by Antonio Lanzavecchia. Humabs proprietary platform is delivering a rich pipeline of high quality and distinct monoclonal antibodies, particularly tailored to specific infectious and inflammatory diseases, which the Company is developing to a pre-clinical level before licensing to development partners.
The Institute for Research in Biomedicine was founded in 2000 in Bellinzona, Switzerland with the clear and ambitious goal of advancing the study of human immunology, with particular emphasis on the mechanisms of host defense.