Marco Colonna

Professor of Pathology & Immunology
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
St. Louis, MO | USA

Dr. Marco Colonna was born in Parma, Italy. He earned his medical degree and specialization in internal medicine from Parma University (Parma, Italy) and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). Subsequently, he became a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology (Basel, Switzerland). Since 2001, Dr. Colonna has served as a Professor of Pathology & Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. In 2019, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Colonna’s research focuses on immunoreceptors, with significant contributions in this field. His key achievements include:

• Identifying and characterizing Killer cell Ig-like receptors and HLA-C and B polymorphisms as their inhibitory ligands.
• Discovering the LILR and TREM families of inhibitory and activating receptors.
• Identifying plasmacytoid dendritic cells as the primary source of IFN-α/β in antiviral responses.
• Characterizing innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) that produce IL-22 in mucosal tissues.

His current research interests include:

• TREM2 and other innate immunoreceptors in Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.
• The role of innate lymphoid cells in mucosal immunity.
• Plasmacytoid dendritic cells in host defense and autoimmunity.