Professor of General Pathology, Dipartimento di Biologia e Patologia Cellulare e Molecolare ‘L. Califano’, Università di Napoli Federico II.

Research
1) Transformation of rat thyroid cells by viral oncogenes.
2) Isolation of activated oncogenes from human thyroid carcinomas.
3) Characterization of the RET/PTC oncogene.
4) Molecular biology of human thyroid carcinomas: oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes.
5) Studies on the mechanism of transformation and loss of differentiation in rat thyroid cells transformed by viral and cellular oncogenes.
6) HMGA proteins and cell transformation.
7) HMGA proteins and adipogenesis.

Selected publications
Battista S, Pentimalli F, Baldassarre G, Fedele M, Fidanza V, Croce CM, Fusco A.Loss of Hmga1 gene function affects embryonic stem cell lympho-hematopoietic differentiation. FASEB J 2003;17:1496-8. Epub 2003 Jun 17.

Baldassarre G, Battista S, Belletti B, Thakur S, Pentimalli F, Trapasso F, Fedele M, Pierantoni GM, Croce CM, Fusco A. Negative regulation of BRCA1 gene expression by HMGA1 proteins accounts for the reduced BRCA1 protein levels in sporadic breast carcinoma. Mol Cell Biol 2003;23:2225-38.

Finelli P, Pierantoni GM, Giardino D, Losa M, Rodeschini O, Fedele M, Valtorta E, Mortini P, Croce VM, Larizza L, Fusco A. The High Mobility Group A2 gene is amplified and overexpressed in human prolactinomas. Cancer Res 2002;62:2398-402.

Baldassarre G, Fedele M, Battista S, Vecchione A, Klein-Szanto AJP, Santoro M, Waldmann TA, Azimi N, Croce CM, Fusco A. Onset of Natural Killer Cell Lymphomas in transgenic mice carrying a truncated HMGI-C1 gene by the chronic stimulation of the IL-2 and IL-15 pathway. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2001;98:7970-75.

Melillo RM, Pierantoni G, Stella A, Battista S, Scala S, De Blasio C, Fedele M, Chiappetta G, Fidanza V, Condorelli G, Santoro M, Croce CM, Viglietto G, Fusco A. Critical role of the HMGI(Y) proteins in adipocytic cell growth and differentiation. Mol Cell Biol 2001;21:2485-95.