Alessandro Sette is an Italian immunologist. He was born on August 11, 1960, in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, to Pietro Sette, a prominent Italian businessman and politician, and Renata Sette. Sette is a professor at the

La Jolla Institute for Immunology La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) is a non-profit research organization in La Jolla, a community of San Diego, California. The institute was founded in 1988. It is located in UC San Diego’s Research Park. The institute researches immunolo ...

(LJI). He is an adjunct professor at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. Sette studies the specific

epitope An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells. The part of an antibody that binds to the epitope is called a paratope. Although e ...

s that the immune system recognizes in cancer, autoimmunity, allergy, and infectious diseases. In 1988, Sette moved to San Diego to conduct research at San Diego biotech Cytel. He then co-founded Epimmune. In 2003, Sette joined the faculty of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Sette co-leads the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), an

NIAID The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, ) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. NIAID's mis ...

-funded online database that catalogues

s involved in immune system recognition of allergens, infectious diseases, autoantigens, and transplanted tissue in humans and various species. In 2020, Sette published the first study of

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the Novel coronavirus, provisional nam ...

epitopes targeted by the human immune system. He has co-led research into

CD8+ A cytotoxic T cell (also known as TC, cytotoxic T lymphocyte, CTL, T-killer cell, cytolytic T cell, CD8+ T-cell or killer T cell) is a T lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) that kills cancer cells, cells that are infected by intracellular pa ...

and CD4+ T cell responses in

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

patients and studied CD8+ T cell cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes and other

coronavirus Coronaviruses are a group of related RNA viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans and birds, they cause respiratory tract infections that can range from mild to lethal. Mild illnesses in humans include some cases of the comm ...

es. Throughout his career, Sette has maintained strong scientific ties with Italy and currently is
Member of the Scientific Council of ISSNAF
a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to connect, empower and celebrate the Italian Intellectual Diaspora in North America. He was recently named as
Member ofISNAFF's Board of Directors
In 2025, Sette was awarded the title of
Cavaliere dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana
in recognition of his contributions to biomedical science and global health.

Education

Sette received his

Laurea In Italy, the ''laurea'' is the main post-secondary academic degree. The name originally referred literally to the laurel wreath, since ancient times a sign of honor and now worn by Italian students right after their official graduation ceremo ...

in Biological Sciences from the University of Rome, Italy, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Immunology with Luciano Adorini at the C.R.E. Casaccia in Rome, Italy, and

Howard Grey Howard Grey (born 1942) is a British photographer. He is known for his photographs of the arrival of the last West Indian migrants at Waterloo Station, London, before the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 came into force. Life and work Grey w ...

at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver, Colorado.

Publications/patents

Sette is a coauthor of over 900 peer-reviewed publications, and is an inventor on 41 US issued patents. He has a H-factor of 182, and is identified by Clarivate as a highly cited researcher.

Awards and honors

The Scripps Research Institute
Adjunct Faculty # American Association of Immunologists Investigator Award (1995) # International Immunomics and Immmunogenics Society Award (2006) # Named as one of th
top 400 influential researchers
in the last 15 years (2013) # 10th Annua
ViE Vaccine Industry Excellence Award
(2017) # Fellow
American Association for the Advancement of Science
(2020) # Ranked 4th amongs
Italian Scientists in Biomedical Sciences
(2021) # Honorary Member, Accademia Medica di Roma (2021) # Gold Medal
Italian Society of Internal Medicine
(2021) # Fellow
Sigma Xi The Scientific Research Honor Society
(2021)
Boulle-SEI
International Award (Alicante, Spain 2021) # Fellow
American Academy of Microbiology
(2023) # Member
Scientific Council of Italian Scientists & Scholars in North America Foundation
ISSNAF (2023) # Ranked 3rd amongs
Italian Scientists in Biomedical Sciences
(2023)
Cavaliere dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana
(2025)

Research

In the mid-80s, at the same time as

Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American businessman, computer programmer, and investor. He co-founded Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which was followed by the ...

in Emil Unanue’s lab, Sette together with Soren Buus in Howard Grey’s lab reported the first direct evidence that MHC molecules’ function is to bind antigenic peptides and present them to the T cell receptor, which triggers a T cell response. Follow-up work explained

MHC restriction In immunology, MHC-restricted antigen recognition, or MHC restriction, refers to the fact that a T cell can interact with a self-major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecule and a foreign peptide bound to it, but will only respond to the antige ...

. In 1989, utilizing an

Apple IIe The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Inc., Apple Computer. It was released in January 1983 as the successor to the Apple II Plus. The ''e'' in the name stands for ...

, Sette wrote the first algorithm to predict peptide binding to two murine MHC alleles and over the course of the next 25 years, he defined motifs associated with over one hundred different class I and class II MHC variants expressed in humans, chimps, macaques, gorilla, horse, and mice. He discovered and characterized how MHC variants can be grouped according to broad common functional specificities (MHC supertypes), greatly facilitating epitope classification, characterization and understanding the basic rules of epitope-MHC interactions. Contrary to the then wide-held assumption that T cell receptors (TCR) solely function as on/off switches, Sette showed that depending on the affinity of the interaction, TCR engagement could result in inhibition of T cell activation, normal activation, or heteroclitic stimulation and differential signaling, in a mechanism that is known as TCR antagonism. This discovery had a profound influence on the understanding of the impact of epitope analogs on antigen recognition, development of more potent cancer antigens, and basic studies on positive and negative selection. Sette is using epitopes as specific probes to define the understanding of immune responses to many different targets, from infectious diseases such as COVID-19, tuberculosis, whooping cough, dengue or Zika, to allergies and asthma caused by pollens, cockroaches and dust mites, to vaccines, autoimmunity and neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Sette's group was first to define successful adaptive response to SARS-CoV-2, by studying mild convalescent samples, and defined durability of

immune memory Immunological memory is the ability of the immune system to quickly and specifically recognize an antigen that the body has previously encountered and initiate a corresponding immune response. Generally, they are secondary, tertiary and other subse ...

in natural infection and

vaccination Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating ...

. We reported the phenomenon of

preexisting immune memory in unexposed donors, and demonstrated its influence on vaccination outcomes. We also demonstrated that T cell responses are largely preserved in terms of recognition of

SARS-CoV-2 variants Variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are viruses that, while similar to the original, have genetic changes that are of enough significance to lead virologists to label them separately. SARS-CoV-2 is the v ...

, including Omicron and Delta.

References

External links

* * *
"ISSNAF Story with Alessandro Sette, La Jolla Institute for Immunology"
''YouTube''. Barbara Rosaria. February 8, 2023 {{DEFAULTSORT:Sette, Alessandro Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Italian immunologists University of California, San Diego faculty 1960 births