Pasqual_CV_20190709.pdf

Prof. Giulia Pasqual received her M.Sc. degree in Medical Biotechnology at University of Padova in 2007. In 2011 she obtained a PhD in Life Sciences from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her thesis elucidated the mechanism of entry into the host cell of human pathogenic arenaviruses, a family of emerging viruses responsible for severe hemorrhagic fevers in Africa and South America.

From 2012 to 2018 Prof. Pasqual was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Gabriel D. Victora, first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technlogy and later at the Rockefeller University, USA. During this period she developed an innovative technology to measure cell-cell interactions in the immune system and used this novel experimental approach to study T cell activation in vivo. Her work has been featured in Nature Methods and Nature TechBlog. It has been covered by several news outlets, by social media (tweeted more than 600 times), and is a recommended reading in Faculty of 1000. The technology she developed is also the content of a granted patent.

Since 2019 she is Assistant Professor at the University of Padova and head of the Synthetic Immunology Lab. By coupling chemical and synthetic biology with mouse genetics, research in her lab aims at developing novel experimental approaches to study interactions between antigen-presenting cells and T cells, with the ultimate goal of revealing the molecular pathways governing the T cell response in vivo in the context of physiological responses and tumor progression.

Over the years Dr. Pasqual has been awarded several international research fellowships, including the Swiss National Science Foundation Mobility Fellowship, the Cancer Research Institute Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship and the L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Fellowship. Her scientific achievements have been recognized by the Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation (finalist, 2018) and the Career Development Award from the Rockefeller University (2017).

Chudnovskiy A, Pasqual G, Victora GD (2019) Studying interactions between dendritic cells and T cells in vivo. Current Opinion in Immunology 58:24-30.     

Pasqual G, Chudnovskiy A, Tas JM, Schweitzer LD, Cui A, Agudelo M, Hacohen N, Victora GD (2018) Monitoring T cell–dendritic cell interactions in vivo by intercellular enzymatic labeling. Nature 553:496-500.

Ersching J, Efeyan A, Mesin L, Jacobsen JT, Pasqual G, Grabiner BC, Dominguez-Sola D, Sabatini DM, Victora GD (2017) Germinal center selection and affinity maturation require dynamic regulation of mTORC1. Immunity 46:1045-1058.

Tas JM^#, Mesin L^#, Pasqual G, Targ S, Jacobsen JT, Mano YM, Chen CS, Weill JC, Reynaud CA, Browne EP, Meyer-Hermann M, Victora GD (2016) Visualizing affinity maturation in germinal centers. Science 351:1048-54. ^#equal contribution

Pasqual G, Angelini A, Victora GD (2015) Triggering positive selection of germinal center B cells by antigen targeting to DEC-205. Methods in Molecular Biology 1291:125-34.

Shulman Z, Gitlin AD, Targ S, Jankovic M, Pasqual G, Nussenzweig MC, Victora GD (2013) T follicular helper cell dynamics in germinal centers. Science 341:673-7.

Pythoud C, Rodrigo WW, Pasqual G, Rothenberger S, Martinez-Sorbido L, de la Torre JC, Kunz S (2012) Arenavirus nucleoprotein targets interferon regulatory factor-activating kinase IKKε. Journal of Virology 86:7728-38.

Burri DJ, Pasqual G, Rochat C, Seidah NG, Pasquato A, Kunz S (2012) Molecular characterization of the processing of arenavirus envelope glycoprotein precursors by subtilisin kexin isozyme-1/site-1 protease. Journal of Virology 86:4935-46.

Pasqual G, Rojek JM, Masin M, Chatton JY, Kunz S (2011) Old World arenaviruses enter the host cell via the multivesicular body and depend on the endosomal sorting complex required for transport. PLoS Pathogens 7:e1002232.

Pasqual G, Burri DJ, Pasquato A, de la Torre JC, Kunz S (2011) Role of the host cell's unfolded protein response in arenavirus infection. Journal of Virology 85:1662-70.

Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research - Programma per Giovani Ricercatori “Rita Levi Montalcini”. Revealing cell-cell communication in the immune system by in vivo synthetic biology (253’873,66 EUR).