Fabiola Terzi

Fabiola Terzi (born January 9, 1961 in Seriate, Bergamo, Italy) is an Italian-French scientist and physician. She is known for her research on chronic kidney disease. Since January 2020, she serves as the director of the research Institute Necker-Enfants Malades (INEM) in Paris.
Terzi attended the “Liceo Scientifico Lussana” in Bergamo and medical school at the University of Milan where she graduated with a medical degree (M.D) in 1986. She trained as a pediatrician in the team of Professor Fabio Sereni in Milan specializing in pediatric nephrology. In 1989 she moved to Paris where she worked on a Ph.D. project under the supervision of Professor Claire Kleinknecht (Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, Paris) developing her interest for the molecular mechanisms of renal diseases. After her doctorate, Terzi further trained as a postdoc in the team of Professor Pascal Briand (Institut Cochin, Paris) before being appointed a permanent position as a researcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (French: Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM) in 1997.
With time she progressively focused on the physiopathology of chronic kidney disease, initially in collaboration with Professor Gérard Friedlander. From 2003 on, Terzi began to build up her own laboratory, which she has headed since then. In 2007, her laboratory located at the campus of the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital joined up with eight other campus-based laboratories to form the “Growth and Signaling” unit, which in 2014 merged with the “Immunology, Infectiology and Hematology” unit to the Institute Necker-Enfants Malades (INEM), a research center affiliated to the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (French: Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM), the French National Center for Scientific Research (French: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) and to the Paris Descartes University. With the founding of INEM in 2014, Terzi became head of its “Growth and Signaling” department. Since January 2020, she serves as the director of INEM responsible for 19 research teams (as of January 2021). Besides, she is editor of the “Experimental Nephrology and Genetics” section of the journal Nephron since 2015.
Terzi’s scientific work centers on the cellular events contributing either to the prevention or progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and on characterizing the pathways and genetic programs underlying these events. She developed distinct experimental models of CKD, above all a model of nephron reduction, leading her to the discovery of pathways and potential pharmacological targets driving CKD. In particular, Terzi’s Team revealed a detrimental role of the EGFR pathway in the fate of CKD, the activation of which aggravates renal lesions after nephron reduction, partly through an AngII-dependent EGFR transactivation. They likewise discovered protective pathways in CKD, e. g. the activation of Akt2 preserving podocytes after nephron reduction.
Beyond that, Terzi has been involved in several translational studies, that have succeeded in the identification of novel biomarkers (of the progression) of renal diseases in humans. The latter are protected by four patent filings (as of January 2021).
For her scientific contributions to the field of nephrology she has been awarded the Grand Prize of the French National Academy of Medicine (French: Grand Prix de l’Académie Nationale de Médecine) in 2009 and the Prize of the French Kidney Foundation (French: Prix de la Fondation du Rein) in 2011.
Category:1961 births
Category:Italian scientists
Category:Italian physicians
Category:University of Milan alumni
Category:Italian women physicians