Fiorenzo Conti - Biography#

Fiorenzo Conti (M.D., 1980) is a Senior Investigator, with a long-standing experience in the study of the molecular organization of synapses. He started as resident at the Institute of Physiology of the University of Ancona (Italy) by studying cortico-cortical connections in cats and monkeys using tract-tracing techniques associated to extracellular single-unit recording. In the mid-80s he was a post-doc in the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology at UNC-Chape Hill (NC) in the lab of Aldo Rustioni, where he studied glutamatergic synapses and mastered morphological techniques, including electron microscopy. Back in Italy, he gained full scientific independence and started his own lab, and continued his work on the organization of synapses, with an emphasis on glutamate receptors and neuron-astrocyte interactions, adding new experimental approaches to his toolbox (confocal microscopy and basic molecular biology) and recruiting and training several young collaborators (many of which are now independent researchers). This led him to be awarded the Prize for Best Young Investigator of the Italian Society of Physiology in 1990, and to become Full Professor in 1994. At that time, he moved to the neurotransmitter transporter field; he studied the localization and regulation of GABA and glutamate transporters in cerebral cortex using confocal and electron microscopy in physiological conditions and following experimental, often pharmacological, manipulations. He expanded his repertoire of experimental tools to include in situ hybridization and post-embedding electron microscopy by spending visiting professorships at UCLA (Los Angeles, CA) in Dr. NC Brecha’s lab (1992) and at UNC-CH in Dr. RJ Weinberg’s lab (1998). As his lab became bigger, Dr. Conti started a line of research aimed at studying the role of glutamate and GABA transporters in neuropsychiatric diseases. In 2012 he became the Director the Center for Neurobiology of Aging at INRCA IRCSS, a research institute of the Ministry of Health, where he investigates molecular and morphological alterations of synaptic plasticity in aging.

Briefly, through his work, Fiorenzo Conti contributed significantly to current understanding of the molecular organization of glutamatergic and GABAergic synapses, most notably to the characterization of the localization, regulation and function of glutamate and GABA transporters in physiological conditions and to their alterations in neuropsychiatric diseases.

Since 1990, he has been teaching Physiology to Medical Students, and to residents in (among others) Neurology, Psychiatry and Anesthesiology. Fiorenzo Conti is the author of a treatise of Physiology (Fisiologia Medica, Edi-Ermes, Milano) that has now reached the third edition, and is used in most italian School of Medicine.

He has authored several papers and a book (Claude Bernard e la nascita della Biomedicina, Raffaello Cortina, Milano, 2013) on history of Physiology and Neuroscience, focusing on french physiologist Claude Bernard, organized international symposia and meeting, and he is actively engaged in scientific outreach.

Fiorenzo Conti has been the President of the italian Society of Neuroscience (2015-2017), and is currently the President of the italian Society of Physiology (2021-2023).