Giovanna Mallucci

Key facts

• Current role: founding Principal Investigator at Altos Labs, Cambridge Institute of Science, since 2022; a September 2026 review lists her affiliations as Altos Labs Cambridge Institute and the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge.
• The UK DRI announced on 19 January 2022 that she would leave her post as founding Director of the UK DRI Cambridge Centre (held since 2017) in March 2022 to join Altos Labs, with David Rubinsztein as interim director.
• From 2014 to 2022 she was van Geest Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge.
• She was a group leader at the MRC Prion Unit, Institute of Neurology, from 2001 to 2008, and co-authored prion papers with John Collinge from 2002 to 2008, including a 2005 review on rational targeting for prion therapeutics.
• Her 2003 Science paper showed that depleting neuronal prion protein in mice with established prion infection prevented clinical disease and reversed early spongiform change, even though abnormal prion protein kept building up outside neurons; 2007 and 2008 follow-ups used RNA interference against prion protein to rescue early neuronal and cognitive deficits.
• Her 2012 Nature paper (with Julie Moreno, MRC Toxicology Unit, Leicester) found that prion replication causes sustained eIF2alpha phosphorylation and a shutdown of protein synthesis that drives synapse loss and neuronal death, and that restoring translation was neuroprotective in prion-diseased mice.
• In 2013 an oral PERK inhibitor prevented clinical prion disease in mice, and in 2015 the compound ISRIB gave partial restoration of protein synthesis with neuroprotection and without the pancreatic toxicity of PERK inhibition.
• In 2017 her team reported that two repurposed compounds, trazodone and dibenzoylmethane, restored protein synthesis and were neuroprotective in prion-diseased and frontotemporal dementia mice; she said trazodone's known human safety made a trial possible.
• In 2015 her lab showed that the cold-shock protein RBM3 mediates the protective effects of cooling in neurodegeneration models, and in 2023 an antisense oligonucleotide that raises RBM3 by blocking a poison exon prevented neurodegeneration in mice without cooling.
• Publications in the last 24 months, all as last author: a February 2024 Brain paper showing trazodone restores disrupted synaptic and mitochondrial protein synthesis in prion-diseased mice, an August 2024 Science paper on PERK and ATAD3A at the mitochondria, and a September 2026 Annual Review on protein synthesis dysregulation in neurodegeneration.
• Translation: she leads a placebo-controlled crossover study at the Cambridge Centre for Parkinson-Plus measuring brain protein synthesis by PET and MRI in progressive supranuclear palsy and its response to trazodone; the page gives no status or registration.
• Grants: the ERC Consolidator project UPR NEURO (University of Cambridge, about EUR 1.98 million, September 2015 to February 2021) studied the same UPR pathway in prion, Alzheimer and Parkinson models; the record read does not name the investigator.
• Recent public activity: a Cambridge Biochemistry seminar on 21 May 2026 titled Translating translation in neurodegeneration, and an honorary doctorate from Sorbonne Universite.
• Honours: Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2017) and the 2021 Potamkin Prize for research in Pick's, Alzheimer's and related diseases.

Timeline

1. 2001Group leader at the MRC Prion Unit.
2. 2003Science paper on depleting neuronal prion protein in established prion infection.
3. 2008Moves from the MRC Prion Unit to the MRC Toxicology Unit, Leicester.
4. 2012Nature paper on eIF2alpha-P translational repression in prion neurodegeneration.
5. 2013Oral PERK inhibitor prevents clinical prion disease in mice.
6. 2014Becomes van Geest Professor of Clinical Neurosciences, Cambridge.
7. 2015Nature paper on RBM3 and the protective effect of cooling.
8. 2015ERC UPR NEURO project starts at Cambridge (to 2021-02).
9. 2017Founding Director of the UK DRI Cambridge Centre; Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
10. 2017Trazodone and dibenzoylmethane neuroprotection results announced.
11. 2021Potamkin Prize.
12. 2022Leaves the UK DRI Cambridge Centre for Altos Labs (announced 19 January 2022).
13. 2023EMBO Molecular Medicine paper on an RBM3 antisense oligonucleotide preventing neurodegeneration.
14. 2024Brain paper on trazodone rescuing protein synthesis in prion-diseased mice.
15. 2024Science paper on the PERK and ATAD3A interaction during ER stress.
16. 2025Honorary doctorate from Sorbonne Universite.
17. 2026Seminar at the University of Cambridge on translation in neurodegeneration, as Altos Labs speaker.
18. 2026Last author on an Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology review of protein synthesis dysregulation in neurodegeneration, listing Altos Labs and Cambridge.