Massimo Trucco, MD, director of the Allegheny Health Network Institute of Cellular Therapeutics, is an internationally known diabetes and immune system expert, and pediatrician for more than 26 years. Dr. Trucco and members of his team came to the Allegheny Health Network in 2014 from Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, where he was the Hillman Professor of Pediatric Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the director of the Division of Immunogenetics, Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Trucco earned international acclaim for research pinpointing genetic predisposition to diabetes, identifying early indicators of diabetes onset and investigating new therapeutic treatments. Dr. Trucco also was the director of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation’s Center for Gene Therapy Approaches to Type 1 Diabetes, one of the National Institute of Health’s Autoimmunity Centers of Excellence, and founded and directed the Pediatric Research Section at the University of Pittsburgh Diabetes Institute. A native of Savona, Italy, Dr. Trucco earned his medical degree from the University of Torino School of Medicine. During his medical residency at the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital in Torino, he conducted research in tissue compatibility that sparked an interest in bone marrow transplantation and other immunologic disease processes. His later research produced an improved typing process for matching bone marrow donors and recipients. Dr. Trucco directed the Histocompatibility Center at Children’s Hospital, a program affiliated with the National Marrow Donor Program. As an integral member of transplant surgery pioneer Dr. Thomas E. Starzl’s team in the 1980s, Dr. Trucco provided seminal insights into the immunology of organ and pancreatic islet transplantation as well as the phenomenon of cellular immune chimer
