Giulio Superti-Furga

Key for any living entity, such as a human cell, is the ability to contain an own environment within membranes that not only preserves the genetic material, but also allows chemical reactions to be efficient and generate energy. Management of the interface between the external world and the biochemical self occurs through the activity and regulation of membrane transporters. The Superti-Furga laboratory considers transporters ideal means to tune cell metabolism while representing a manifestation of a cell’s appetite for nutrients, integrated over the environment’s offer.

The GSF Lab science summarized in five points:

1. We investigate the mechanisms and logic of how the concentration of individual metabolites, ions, and nutrients is achieved, coordinated, and maintained within cells.
2. We study the roles that varying concentrations of small molecules in the intracellular and extracellular environments play in defining cellular identity, maintaining homeostasis, and influencing disease processes.
3. We perturb specific metabolic processes and signaling pathways to alter cell growth and analyze their interdependence.
4. We maintain a strategic focus on membrane transporters as druggable regulators of metabolism, and on proteostasis as a therapeutic link between growth and metabolic control.
5. We actively promote translational research through the design and discovery of small molecule drugs that modulate cellular homeostasis, and through ex vivo assessment of drug action in cancer and inflammatory diseases.

Metabolism and regulation of metabolite concentration

All cells are surrounded by a lipid bilayer forming a selective barrier between the aqueous cell interior and the external environment. Yet, cells must import nutrients, water, and ions to sustain cellular metabolism, generate energy, and produce the building blocks for genome preservation and replication. While few molecules can diffuse through the membrane, most—including vitamins, hormones, xenobiotics, phytochemicals, pesticides, microbiome-derived metabolites, and critically, pharmaceutical drugs—require membrane transporters for cellular entry.

These transporters are the gatekeepers at the chemistry-biology interface and mediate interactions between organisms and their environments. As one of the largest and underexplored gene families in humans, we proposed intensifying research on the SLC (solute carrier) transporter superfamily—the most extensive group of human membrane transporters (César-Razquin, Snijder et al, Cell 2015).

Our lab investigates how SLC transporters regulate metabolic flux, drug transport, and cellular signaling. A deeper understanding of the specificity and function of individual SLCs and their networks could improve drug targeting and provide insights into how biological systems are shaped by their chemical environments.

Cancer targets and drug discovery

Most effective therapeutic agents act not through single targets, but by inducing broad and intricate perturbations of biological systems. By applying a rigorous, systems biology approach to chemical compound characterization, we aim to improve our understanding of drug action, facilitate patient stratification, and enhance the precision of clinical trials. This approach may also aid in reducing side effects and guide combination therapy strategies with existing treatments.

The GSF lab has a long-standing interest in hematopoietic malignancies, particularly the molecular mechanisms of leukemia. From BCR-ABL signaling in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) to various forms of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), we utilize state-of-the-art methods to explore drug resistance and uncover novel therapeutic targets in targeted cancer therapy.

Innate immunity, inflammation, and infection

Understanding how the human body detects and responds to pathogens such as viruses and bacteria, and how autoimmune responses are activated or dysregulated, is essential for developing new treatments across diverse inflammatory and infectious diseases.

Over the past decade, we have:

• Discovered a novel adaptor protein linking innate and adaptive immunity.
• Revealed roles of SLC transporters in viral infection survival and bacterial phagocytosis.
• Demonstrated how membrane lipid composition influences innate immune signaling.
• Explored how modulating programmed cell death can be harnessed to mitigate inflammation.

Giulio Superti-Furga, Ph.D., is Scientific Director and CEO of the Research Center of Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Professor of Medical Systems Biology at the Center for Physiology Medical University of Vienna. He is also Scientific Director of the Ri.MED Foundation in Palermo, Italy and the designated Director General of the new research center of the foundation. Since 2024 he is chair of EU-LIFE , the alliance of seventeen leading life science institutes in Europe. 

For three years, (2017-2019) he has been a member of the Scientific Council of the ERC (European Research Council). 

He performed his undergraduate and graduate studies in molecular biology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, at Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, USA, and at the Institute for Molecular Pathology in Vienna (I.M.P.), Austria. He was a post-doctoral fellow and Team Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) until 2004. For several years he served as professor of Biotechnology at the University of Bologna. In 2000, he co-founded the biotech company Cellzome Inc., where for five years he was Scientific Director and responsible for the Heidelberg research site. He also co-founded the biotech companies Haplogen, Allcyte, Proxygen and Solgate.

His most significant scientific contributions are the elucidation of basic regulatory mechanisms of tyrosine kinases in human cancers, discovery of fundamental organization principles of the proteome of higher organisms and the discovery of a number of key proteins in innate immunity. Since more than ten years, he has been leading international efforts to understand the function of the human transportome, the ensemble of membrane transporters. 

At CeMM, he promoted a unique mode of super-cooperation, connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, discovery with translation, and science with society and the arts. 

Giulio Superti-Furga is a member of five science academies, including the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

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Check here Giulio Superti-Furga’s genome: PGA-1

RESOLUTE introduction video

Nucleoside transporters and purine levels modulate BRD4-dependent chromatin states

LZTR1 - New mechanism controlling the master cancer regulator uncovered

Pharmacoscopy – Watching drug action under the microscope

Lipidome - The code of how cellular lipids are co-regulated

SLC38A9 - A component of the lysosomal amino acid sensing machinery that controls mTORC1

Novel strategy to molecular anticancer therapy tricks malignant cells

Targeting the SH2-kinase interface in Bcr-Abl inhibits leukemogenesis