Donato Di Monte received his medical and research training in Italy (University of Bari), Sweden (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm) and the US (University of California, Berkeley). He held employment and professional appointments that included (i) Director of Fundamental Research at The Parkinson’s Institute (Sunnyvale, California), (ii) member of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Training Grant and Career Development Review Committee, and (iii) Chair of the Steering Committee for the Collaborative Centers for PD Environmental Research of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). He is currently Senior Group Leader at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Bonn, Germany.
The long-standing focus of his research has been on mechanisms of neurodegeneration and alpha-synuclein toxicity in Parkinson’s disease. He has contributed significantly to the development and characterization of animal models mimicking specific aspects of parkinsonian pathology, such as nigrostriatal degeneration (e.g., MPTP- and paraquat-induced dopaminergic cell death) and accumulation/spreading of alpha-synuclein (e.g., brain spreading of alpha-synuclein after its targeted overexpression in the vagal system). Using these models, he has investigated the influence of disease risk factors, such as aging, genetic variants and environmental determinants, and elucidated the role of pathogenetic mechanisms, such as mitochondrial impairment, neuron-to-neuron alpha-synuclein transfer, oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. Experiments in Parkinson models were also aimed at testing neuroprotective strategies that, by targeting specific molecular mechanisms (e.g., lowering neuronal metabolic burden and/or mitigating microglial response), could provide important clues for the development of new therapeutics.