Guido Tarone, an Italian cell biologist whose pathbreaking insights on cell-cell adhesion mechanisms contributed to open new perspectives both in basic and translational cell biology and helped to drive the development of new therapies to target cardiovascular and genetic diseases, passed away on May 17th in Torino. He was 63.

Guido was born on December 24th, 1951, in Torino. His passion for science, and experimental research in particular, was already his driving force during high school, directing his future career choices. He studied at the University of Torino, where he graduated in Cell Biology, summa cum laude, in 1974.

Academic career

In 1976, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Pathology, Yale University, USA; moving back to Italy in 197, he became a young Research fellow of the National Research Council in Histology and Embryology at the University of Trieste.

In 1981, he became Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Oncology, University of Torino. He then progressed as an Associate Professor of Cell Biology at the Department of Genetics, Biology and Biochemistry, University of Torino, in 1992 and in 1994 he was appointed Full Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Rome "La Sapienza". Back in Torino in 1997, he continued his tireless work till the creation of the Department of Molecular Biotechnology and Health Science, of which he became the first Head in 2012. Since 2006, he also coordinated the PhD program in Biomedical Sciences and Human Oncology at the University of Torino.

During these years he spent several months at foreign universities as Visiting Professor, in particular at the Wistar Institute (Philadelphia, PA, USA), in 1983, at La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation (La Jolla, CA), in 1989 and at the Department of Pathology, Columbia University, in New York, in 2000.

In the academic field, he dedicated time and continuous effort for the AIBG, Associazione Italiana Biologia e Genetica, since its foundation in December 1990. He was a board member of the society from 1996 to 1999, and a pillar of the AIBG in the organization of scientific conferences and in capillary discussions among colleagues all the time.

Scientific interests

He published more than 150 papers, the first appearing in 1973 (Tarone et al., 1973), when he was still an undergraduate student, and the most recent in Blood in 2015 (Di Savino et al., 2015, April 2nd) and several books. His research was always supported by Italian and European peer-reviewed grants. He made several inventions and patents.

From the beginning of his research, Guido was interested in understanding the connection between a cell and its extracellular environment, focusing his attention on membrane proteins.

In his 1980 breakthrough, Guido Tarone highly contributed to the identification of the integrin family of cell-matrix receptors (Giancotti et al., 1987; Tarone et al., 1988), characterizing the expression of different heterodimers and their role in physiological and pathological events (Defilippi etal, 1991; 1992; Zhang et al., 1993). In late nineties, he and his coworkers highlighted that integrins not only regulate adhesion, but also constrain and direct the response to soluble growth factors (Defilippi et al.1998; Soldi et al., 1999). As he wrote in a review (Giancotti and Tarone, 2003) “the close, intimate contact with the matrix exerts an extraordinary control on the behavior of cells, determining whether they move or stay put, proliferate or remain quiescent, and even live or die”.

At the beginning of the nineties, Guido identified alternative spliced forms of the beta1 integrin, namely the beta1b (Balzac et al., 1994) and the beta1D subunits, the last one being highly tissue specific (Belkin et al., 1996). Looking for beta1D interactors, Guido and coworkers identified Melusin, a muscle specific chaperone protein acting downstream of integrins, as key player in triggering adaptive cardiac response to different stress stimuli (Brancaccio et al., 1999; 2003).

These results changed radically his field of research, shifting his interests to molecular cardiology. He discovered that Melusin over-expression protects heart from chronic pressure overload (De Acetis et al 2005), myocardial infarct (Unsold et al. 2014) and ischemia-reperfusion (Penna et al., 2014). He also studied the molecular basis of Melusin action in cardiomiocytes (Sbroggio et al., 2011). Based on these data, Guido and his team were currently testing the therapeutic value of Melusin gene therapy using adeno associated virus vectors (AAV) in animal models of heart failure.

Guido became a driving force in the European Society of Cardiology, as witnessed by his recent paper: “Targeting myocardial remodelling to develop novel therapies for heart failure: a position paper from the Working Group on Myocardial Function of the European Society of Cardiology” (Tarone et al., 2014).

In the scientific community Guido was sought after as a speaker and collaborator, also because he was open minded and generous in giving credit to others. He organized meetings and workshops, the last one in Varenne, April 30th, 2015, on “Myocardial Function & Cellular Biology of the Heart Meeting 2015: Salvage Pathways in Heart Rejuvenation”.

He was a member of the Study Section for Grant Reviewing for Telethon, AIRC, Neuroblastoma Association, Human Frontier Science Program, Italian Ministry of University and Research, The Wellcome Trust. He was also member of International Evaluation Panel at the University of Oulu, Finland and at the Institut de Biologie et Chimie des Protéines, Lyon, France.

Last but not least, Guido has been instrumental in the development of the fabric of science that has enriched cell and developmental biology research in Italy in the last 35 years. Above all, in the eighties, he was one of the founders and first members of the ABCD, Associazione di Biologia Cellulare e del Differenziamento, of which he was also President in 2005-2007. Guido has been a continuous and assiduous promoter of ABCD meetings, in particular of "Mechanisms of Signal Transduction". In all these years Guido always participated actively at meetings, leading the discussion and putting an effort to stimulate the participants, especially the young people, to do “good” science.

During his scientific life, Guido has realized the dream of many researchers: investigating molecular and cellular mechanisms to open new diagnostic and therapeutic perspectives, with innovative methodologies and intellectual accuracy. Guido has highlighted to all of us that “dreams can become true”.