Francesco Colucci

School of Clinical Medicine

University of Cambridge

Francesco Colucci

Professor Francesco Colucci’s work has helped to understand how natural killer (NK) cells develop and function and how they recognize cancer cells. Since 2006, he has focused on how NK cells in the womb regulate healthy reproduction and fetal growth. Trained as a physician at Bari University in the late 80’s, Francesco moved to Umeå University in 1992 with a research scholarship from the Swedish Institute. There he learned to use tetraparental chimeras to study cellular mechanisms of disease. This became the subject of his PhD under the supervision of Takeshi Matsunaga and Dan Holmberg. He then moved to Jim Di Santo’s lab in Paris at the Necker Hospital in 1997. The lab relocated to the Pasteur Institute, where Francesco became associate professor in 2000. In 2004 he moved to Cambridge, UK as a group leader at the Babraham Institute to then move into his current post at the University Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2010. Francesco is also fellow, director of studies in medicine and graduate tutor at King's College, manager of the Centre for Trophoblast Research in Cambridge, advisor to the advanced school of immunology Ruggero Ceppellini in Naples and visiting professor at the University of Turin.

Publications