Massimo Locati is group leader at Humanitas Research Hospital, in Milan, where he leads the Leukocyte biology Lab, as well as full professor of immunology and general pathology at University of Milan.
Massimo Locati graduated summa cum laude in Medicine in 1992 from University of Milan, Italy. He was then Research Fellow in the Department of Immunology and Cell Biology at Mario Negri Institute, Milan, till 1995, and subsequently in the Laboratory of Host Defenses, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Washington, from 1995 to 1996. During these years he was mainly involved in the definition of chemokine receptors signaling properties and in particular he defined the role of chemokine receptors’ signaling in HIV-1 infection.
Back in Italy, he became assistant professor at the University of Brescia in 1998, before moving to the University of Milan in 2001, were he is now full professor of immunology and general pathology at the Department of Medical Biotechnologies and Translational Medicine. Since 2007 he is group leader of the Leukocyte Biology Lab at Humanitas Research Hospital.
In his scientific career he has contributed to the identification of chemokine receptors and their biological role in inflammatory diseases, to the identification of atypical/decoy chemokine receptors, to the definition and molecular characterization of macrophage polarized activation (M1/M2 signatures). The lab is now focused on molecular mechanisms controlling inflammatory responses and their resolution and on macrophage biology in tumors.
His research has been founded by the Ministry of University and Research, the Ministry of Health, Fondazione AIRC, and several international agencies including EC programs. As of February 2022, he has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications, with more than 48.000 citations by Google Scholar and an H-index of 68 by Scopus.