Maurizio Zazzi, MSc Associate Professor of Microbiology, University of Siena School of Medicine
Dr. Zazzi graduated in Biological Sciences and later obtained a Master's degree in Microbiology and Virology at the University of Siena, Italy. In 1988 he joined the Division of Microbiology of the Department of Molecular Biology of the same university where he started his work on the development of molecular assays for viral diagnostics. In 1990 he was invited to join the Clinical Virology Unit, Siena University Hospital where these methods were further optimised and fully adopted for detection of many human viruses in clinical practice. At this Unit, in 1991 he started the Siena HIV Monitoring Service (SHMS) where assays for quantitation of HIV nucleic acids and HIV genotyping were made available as a Public Health Service in 1995. The SHMS became a reference laboratory for HIV antiretroviral resistance testing, receiving samples from many Infectious Diseases units in Italy. The fruitful co-operation with most of these clinics has made it possible to build and maintain a large HIV sequence and clinical data database. In 2002 he was appointed Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Siena School of Medicine.
In the last five years, Dr. Zazzi has focused his efforts on antiretroviral resistance, taking part in clinical studies and designing and performing retrospective studies aimed at defining the in vivo role of different HIV mutations. Availability of a large number of stored HIV nucleic acid samples has allowed the analysis of HIV evolution and compartmentalization of different variants under drug pressure. At the SHMS, Dr. Zazzi has also developed an HIV genotype interpretation system that has been successfully tested in terms of prediction of phenotype. In 2002 he joined enthusiastically the RDI, because of its congruence with his own approach to building and applying scientific knowledge to public health.