![](https://cancerprev.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/DOTTO_8416-529x1024.jpg)
Prof. Gian-Paolo Dotto is director of the Laboratory of Skin Aging and Cancer Prevention, in the Dermatology Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, director of the Personalised Cancer Prevention Program, University Hospital (CHUV) in Lausanne (CH) and President of the international Cancer Prevention Institute (iCPI).
He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (2011), the Academia Europaea (2012), the Leopoldina German National Academy of Sciences (2014) and an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (2018). He is the recipient of a number of awards, including the American Skin Association Achievement Award (2012), an ERC Advanced investigator grant award (2013) the Jurg Tschopp Award for Excellence in Biological Sciences (2015) and the Life Time Achievement Award from the University of Lausanne, School of Medicine and Biology (2020). He has been a contributor for the Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Holy See, as well as the Science and Society section of EMBO Reports.
Education, training and positions
Dr. Dotto was educated at the University of Turin, Italy, where he received his MD in 1979. He then earned his PhD in bacteriophage genetics at the Rockefeller University, New York, in 1983. He moved for his postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute/MIT in Cambridge Mass. and subsequently joined Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, as assistant professor of Pathology in 1987. He was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 1992 and soon after moved to Harvard Medical School, in the newly established Cutaneous Biology Research Center. In 2000 he obtained the full professorship at Harvard Medical School and a Biologist position at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2002 he accepted a position of Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), while retaining his position of Biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Scientific contributions
The PI has opened major new perspectives on the complex balance that presides tissue homeostasis and tumorigenesis. His laboratory has been studying the interplay between intracellular and intercellular cell communication pathways that operate in this context, focusing on early steps of skin cancer development as a model.
Outreach activities
Dr. Dotto is founder and director of the International Cancer Prevention Institute (IPCI) (www.cancerprev.ch), a new paradigm of teaching / research institute and global forum for educators, policy makers and the general public for development of joint interdisciplinary efforts in primary, secondary and tertiary cancer prevention. He has organized several courses and workshops dedicated to this topic (including a recent EMBO meeting in 2018) and has been a driving force for a new collaborative PhD program on cancer prevention (Marie Curie Innovative Training Network, CANCERPREV).
Representative Publications (for a complete list see bibliography)
- Missero C, Calautti E, Eckner R, Chin J, Tsai L-H, Livingston DM, Dotto GP. Involvement of the cell cycle inhibitor Cip1/WAF1 and the Ela-associated p300 protein in terminal differentiation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1995.
- Di Cunto F, Topley G, Calautti E, Hsiao J, Ong L, Seth PK, Dotto GP. Inhibitory function of p21Cip1/WAF1 in differentiation of primary mouse keratinocytes independent of cell cycle control. Science. 1998.
- Rangarajan, A., C. Talora, M. Nicolas, R. Okuyama, C. Mammucari, H. Oh, J. C. Aster, S. Krishna, D. Metzger, P. Chambon, L. Miele, M. Aguet, F. Radtke and G. P. Dotto. Notch signaling functions as a direct determinant of the exit of keratinocytes from the cell cycle and entry into differentiation. The EMBO Journal. 2001.
- Nguyen B-C, Lefort K, Mandinova A, Antonini D, Devgan V, Della Gatta G, Koster MI, Zhang Z, Wang J, Tommasi di Vignano A, Kitajewski J, Chiorino G, Roop DR, Missero C and Dotto GP, Cross-regulation between Notch and p63 in keratinocyte commitment to differentiation. Genes & Dev. 2006.
- Wu, X., Nguyen, B.C., Dziunycz, P., Chang, S., Brooks, Y., Lefort, K., Hofbauer, G.F., and Dotto, G.P. Opposing roles for calcineurin and ATF3 in squamous skin cancer. Nature. 2010.
- Hu, B, Castillo, E., Harewood, L., Ostano, P., Reymond, A., Dummer, R., Raffoul, W., Hoetzenecker, W., Hofbauer, G.F.L. and Dotto, G.P. Multifocal Epithelial Tumors and Field Cancerization from Loss of Mesenchymal CSL Signaling. Cell. 2012.
- Dotto, G.P. Multifocal epithelial tumors and field cancerization: stroma as a primary determinant. J Clin Invest. 2014.
- Procopio, M.G., Laszlo, C., Al Labban, D., Eun Kim, D., Bordignon, P., Jo, S., Goruppi, S., Menietti, E., Ostano, P., Ala, U., Provero, P., Hoetzenecker, W., Neel, V., Kilarski, W., Swartz, M.A., Brisken, C., Lefort1, K. and Dotto, G.P. Combined CSL and p53 downregulation promotes cancer-associated fibroblast activation. Nature Cell Bio. 2015.
- Dotto, G.P, and Rustgi, A., Squamous cell cancers: a unified perspective on biology and genetics. Cancer Cell. 2016.
- Clocchiatti A, Ghosh S, Procopio MG, Mazzeo L, Bordignon P, Ostano P, Goruppi S, Bottoni G, Katarkar A, Levesque M, Kölblinger P, Dummer R, Neel V, Özdemir BC, Dotto GP. Androgen receptor functions as transcriptional repressor of cancer-associated fibroblast activation. J Clin Invest. 2018.
- Katarkar, A., Bottoni, G., Clocchiatti, A., Goruppi, S., Bordignon, P., Lazzaroni, F., Gregnanin, I., Ostano, P., Neel, V., and G.P. Dotto. NOTCH1 gene amplification promotes expansion of Cancer Associated Fibroblast populations in human skin. Nature Comm. 2020.
- Ma, M., Ghosh, S., Tavernari, D., Katarkar, A., Clocchiatti, A., Mazzeo, L., Samarkina, A., Epiney, Yu, Y._R. Ho, P.-C., Levesque, M.P. Özdemir, B.C., Ciriello, G., Dummer, R. and G.P. Dotto. Sustained Androgen Receptor signaling is a determinant of melanoma cell growth potential and tumorigenesis. J. Exp. Med. 2021.
- Xu, X., Tassone, B., Ostano, P., Katarkar, A., Proust, T., Joseph, J.M., Riganti, C., Chiorino, G., Kutalik, Z., Lefort, K., and Dotto, G.P. HSD17B7 gene in self-renewal and oncogenicity of keratinocytes from Black versus White populations. EMBO Mol Med. 2021.
- Goruppi S, Clocchiatti A, Bottoni G, Di Cicco E, Ma M, Tassone B, Neel V, Demehri S, Simon C, Paolo Dotto G. The ULK3 kinase is a determinant of keratinocyte self-renewal and tumorigenesis targeting the arginine methylome. Nat Commun. 2023.
- Samarkina A, Youssef MK, Ostano P, Ghosh S, Ma M, Tassone B, Proust T, Chiorino G, Levesque MP, Goruppi S, Dotto GP. Androgen receptor is a determinant of melanoma targeted drug resistance. Nat Commun. 2023.
- Mazzeo L, Ghosh S, Di Cicco E, Isma J, Tavernari D, Samarkina A, Ostano P, Youssef MK, Simon C, Dotto GP. ANKRD1 is a mesenchymal-specific driver of cancer-associated fibroblast activation bridging androgen receptor loss to AP-1 activation. Nat Commun. 2024.
Opinion articles (mostly in Italian, full text in English provided by links):
- The death of God (La morte di Dio), Osservatore Romano, 2017, April 18th daily edition and 20th weekly edition
- The mystery of the empty tomb (Il mistero della tomba vuota), Osservatore Romano, 2017, May 4th
- Jesus walks by on the road (Gesu’ passa per strada), Osservatore Romano, 2017, June 15th
- Charlie and Jesus (Charlie e Gesu’), Osservatore Romano, 2017, July 8th
- Doctor Faust and the little donkey (Faust e l’asinello), Osservatore Romano, 2017, August 26th
- The day yields to the night (Il giorno e la notte), Osservatore Romano, 2017, October 8th
- Generated, not created (Generato non creato), Osservatore Romano, 2017, December 25th daily edition; December 21st weekly edition
- Enlightment of education (Trasmettere significa portare alla luce), Osservatore Romano, 2018 January 4thth, daily and weekly editions
- On the cloning of monkeys (Una notizia che va ridimensionata, la clonazione delle scimmie), Osservatore Romano, 2018, January 28th
- The many shapes of water (Le forme dell’ acqua), Osservatore Romano, 2018, July 21st
- Humility and Sanctity of wine (Umiltà e santità del vino), Osservatore Romano, 2018, Nov. 10th
- Faith and science : are they truly irreconcilable ? (Fede e scienza, due vie davvero inconciliabili ?) Vita e Pensiero, 2018, v.6, p. 112-116
- Gender and sex—time to bridge the gap, EMBO Molecular Medicine, 2019; DOI:10.15252/emmm.201910668
- Conjectures, refutations and the search for truths: Science, symbolic truths and the devil. EMBO Reports, 2020; doi: 10.15252/embr.201949924
- To be or not to be: The second law of thermodynamics and the flow of life and death. EMBO Reports, 2020; doi: 10.15252/embr.202050861
Books
- Death and Resurrection: An experiment in progress. Gian-Paolo Dotto. 2022, February 24th