Pietro de Camilli to Present 2024 Konrad Bloch Lecture on April 11

                    This year’s Bloch lecture will be delivered by HHMI Investigator Pietro de Camilli whose research centers on neuronal cell biology in health and disease.

At Yale University, where he is the John Klingenstein Professor of Neuroscience, Professor of Cell Biology, and founding director of the Program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair, Prof. de Camilli studies the dynamics of neuronal cell membranes, particularly at synapses. His research has provided fundamental insights into the mechanisms of membrane fission and recycling. His discovery and characterization of the role of phosphoinositide metabolism in the control of endocytosis have broad implications in the fields of phospholipid signaling and of membrane traffic, not just at neuronal synapses. His studies of synapses have contributed significantly to the elucidation of pathogenetic mechanisms of human diseases, with recent emphasis on Parkinson’s disease. 
Prof. de Camilli is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the van Deenen Medal from the Institute of Biomembranes at Utrecht University, Netherlands and the Ernst Jung Gold Medal for Medicine and the E.B. Wilson Medal from the American Society for Cell Biology. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Italian Academy of Sciences.

About the Konrad Bloch Lecture
The Bloch lecture, sponsored by Pfizer, honors Harvard faculty member and Nobel-prize recipient Konrad Bloch (1912-2000), a pioneer in the field of cholesterol and lipid metabolism. 

Konrad E. Bloch was an outstanding scientist who helped shape the discipline of biochemistry in its formative years.  One of the founders of biochemical studies at Harvard, he was part of the pioneer generation that included George Wald, Paul Doty, John Edsall and Frank Westheimer. Best known for his studies of cholesterol, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1964 (shared with Feodor Lynen) for investigations in the mechanism and regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism. Especially noteworthy were the studies on the biological synthesis of the molecule and, according to the Nobel Prize website, “on various aspects of terpene and sterol biogenesis…enzymatic formation of unsaturated fatty acids and…in various aspects of biochemical evolution.”
Arriving at Harvard from the University of Chicago in 1954, he was appointed Higgins Professor of Biochemistry, a position he held until his retirement in 1982. He was part of the core group at Harvard that founded the Committee on Higher Degrees in Biochemistry. With the somewhat later arrival of James Watson, Matthew Meselson, Walter Gilbert, Mark Ptashne and Guido Guidotti, Harvard had achieved a remarkably dynamic and productive core group in biochemistry and molecular biology, of which Dr. Bloch was a signal part. The late Dean Jeremy Knowles described him as “a marvelously perceptive biochemist and a wise, generous and cultivated man who forged the connections between chemistry and biochemistry. He was one of that distinguished line of European biochemists whose deep understanding of metabolism laid the chemical foundations of today’s biology.” [quoted in Harvard Gazette, Oct. 19, 2000]
Dr. Bloch was born in Neisse, then part of Germany, in 1912; he was racially excluded from his studies at Munich in 1934 upon the Nazi advent to power. His subsequent odyssey began in Switzerland, and he was spared a likely fatal return to Germany by the intervention of John Anderson, a Yale biochemist, who helped him with a visa to the US. In America, his studies resumed at Columbia; after a brief stay in Chicago, he came to Harvard.
His work was widely recognized; in addition to the Nobel, he received the US National Medal of Science, and many other awards and honorary degrees. In addition to his scientific output, he wrote intriguing popularizing works such as “Blondes in Venetian Paintings, the Nine-banded Armadillo, and Other Essays in Biochemistry”. He died in 2000, at the age of 88. In 1986, the annual Konrad Bloch lecture was inaugurated in his honor.

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Prof. Guido Guidotti for reviewing the text for accuracy.
 by Jim Henle 