Biography

Luca Valenti, MD
June 12th 1975, Milan, Italy

TEACHING ACTIVITIES
2009 – Lecturer, Internal Medicine, Medicine degree, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
2009 – Lecturer, Human Pathophysiology, Medical Biotechnologies degree, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
2009 – Elective courses: “Genetics in hepatology”, “Metabolic liver diseases”, “Transfusion Medicine” residency in “Internal Medicine and Metabolic Diseases”, “Internal Medicine and Transfusion Medicine” Faculty of Medicine, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

CLINICAL DUTIES
- Since 2019, I coordinate the activity of the Internal Medicine and Hepatology service, Department of Transfusion Medicine and Hematology (clinical, ultrasonography and fibroscan service), clinical trials in the NAFLD field, and I set up a clinical multidisciplinary program for the screening and prevention or cardiometabolic, hepatic and neoplastic disorders in individuals with dysmetabolism in the POLIMI cohort. I set up the next-generation sequencing diagnostics for identifying genetic mutations responsible for rare hepatic and lipid metabolism disorders, and for blood antigen typing at the Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda.

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
2008 – Faculty member, Medicine and Surgery, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
2011 – 2017 Scientific Committee, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Policlinico, Milan, Italy
2011 – 2015 Organizer of “Ca’ Granda Seminars in Molecular Medicine”, and of internal seminars “Lunch sessions”, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda, Milan, Italy
2012 – Scientific Committee, Dept. of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
2013 – 2017 Board member of the Ph.D. School “Clinical and Experimental Medicine”, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
2017 - Member of the Committee for the supervision of experimental animal research, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda, Milan, Italy
2017 - Coordinator of Internal Medicine training for Medical Specialization Schools, University of Milan
2021 - Genomic and Bioinformatic Platform Scientific Board, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
2006 Italian Society of Internal Medicine (SIMI) Research Prize
2012 Italian Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AISF) Prize for the Best Italian Paper in Hepatology 2010
2017 - Scientific National Habilitation (ASN), Italy, Full Professor of Internal Medicine and Full Professor of Gastroenterology

SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY
My main research interest is to understand the genetic and molecular basis of liver disease, and to apply these discoveries to prevent, diagnose and treat more effectively liver disorders (both common and rare diseases), through the identification of novel biomarkers and the development of advanced precision medicine targeted therapeutic approaches. I also focused on the impact of dysmetabolism on the outcome of viral diseases, and on the role of altered iron metabolism in the pathogenesis of chronic degenerative conditions.
I use a variety of tools ranging from genomic studies in large cohorts of healthy individuals and patients with metabolic liver disease with extensive phenotypic characterization (the European Liver Biopsy Cohort and Italian EPIDEMIC cohort, and the Fondazione Genomic study, a population based cohort, and Liver Bible, a multi-OMICs characterized cohort of individuals with dysmetabolism I set up at the Fondazione Biobank), to human and molecular genetics with generation of in vitro multilineage 3D models of disease by genome editing, to understand how genetic variation leads to phenotypic manifestations.
In the iron field, I have contributed to establishing the role of body iron accumulation in the pathogenesis of metabolic and cardiovascular complications of insulin resistance, and I am contributing to evaluate the therapeutic utility of iron depletion and the modulation of iron pathways for the prevention of metabolic diseases.
During the last five years, I more robustly established the causal link between genetic variation influencing hepatic lipid metabolism alterations and the spectrum of progressive liver disease, including primary liver cancer, highlighting the role of carriage of rare genetic variants responsible for Mendelian disorders, and during the COVID-19 pandemia I contributed highlighting the first genetic determinants of the susceptibility to develop severe COVID-19.

Author of 317 peer-reviewed papers; total impact factor = 3,249; average IF = 10.6
171 papers as main author (78 as first, 86 as last, 116 as corresponding author; IF=1,777; average IF=10.4).
Scholar: H-index 72, i10-index: 209; citation index 18,880; Scopus H-index: 60.