Vascular control of chronic hepatitis, infection and cancer

Clinician Scientist and Honorary Consultant Hepatologist

Donato Inverso was originally trained as a pathologist at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Naples, Italy. From 2011 to 2015, he completed his PhD in Basic and Applied Immunology at Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele. During this time, he established a correlative microscopy technique that combines the specificity of 3D confocal fluorescence microscopy with the much higher resolution (a few nanometers instead of micrometers) of transmission electron microscopy. This approach, used alongside a murine model of hepatitis B (HBV) pathogenesis, led to the discovery of a peculiar mechanism of intra-hepatic immune surveillance that requires the presence of endothelial fenestrations (Cell, 2015). In 2016, he transitioned to a postdoctoral position at the Division of Vascular Oncology and Metastasis at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, where he remained until 2021. There, he explored the intersection of vascular biology and liver pathobiology, pioneering the first comprehensive and spatially resolved phosphoproteome of any vascular bed. This groundbreaking work revealed a previously overlooked phosphorylation gradient along liver blood vessels, essential for liver homeostasis, regeneration (Dev Cell), and NASH progression (Nature Medicine, 2019). His research has been published in top-tier journals, including Nature, Cell, Cancer Cell, and Nature Medicine. He has received numerous accolades, including an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship (2017), an AIRC Start-Up Grant (2022), a FET-OPEN Grant from the European Innovation Council (2021), and a Cariplo Reinforcement Grant (2024). In 2023, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to study the vascular control of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Since then, he has served as Professor of Pathology at the Medical School in Milan and Head of the Vascular Pathobiology Unit at San Raffaele University Hospital.