Sebastiano Gattoni-Celli

Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology
MUSC, Charleston, SC

M.D., University of Naples, Italy

gattonis@musc.edu

Research:
  Marine Mammals as Sentinels for Human Health:
Dr. Gattoni-Celli's research focus is on establishing new tools for studying marine mammals. As protected species, there are ethical and logistical reasons that limit opportunities to evaluate the effects of hazardous substances using conventional investigative techniques on these species. In vitro methods are necessary to evaluate toxicological effects of pollutants in protected marine mammal species. Thus, primary cell cultures afford the opportunity to test contaminants for their toxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic effects. We have developed skin-derived cell cultures (DS1-6) from tissue specimens of the Atlantic bottlenose dolphin Tursiops Truncatus. We believe that our previous experience with establishing primary cultures from a large number of human tumors (for the purpose of making cancer vaccines) may have helped in the attempt to establish cell cultures from dolphin skin. We are now exploring strategies to generate immortal cell lines by means of retroviral vectors expressing a variety of oncogenes. Cell cultures from dolphin skin will allow the development of in vitro models for mechanistic studies on the effect that contaminants have on these marine mammals. Epidermal cell cultures, therefore, provide a unique tool for investigating key features of the interaction occurring between dolphins and their environment at their most crucial interphase: the skin.

Publications:

 

Yu J, Kindy MS, Ellis BC, Baatz JE, Peden-Adams M, Ellingham TJ, Wolff DJ, Fair PA, Gattoni-Celli S. Establishment of epidermal cell lines derived from the skin of the Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus). Anatomical Record 2005, in press

 

Establishment of Epidermal Cell Lines Derived from the Skin of the Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus). Jin Yu, Mark S. Kindy, Blake C. Ellis, John E. Baatz, Margie Peden-Adams, Tara J. Ellingham, Daynna J. Wolff, Patricia A. Fair, and Sebastiano Gattoni-Celli , Anatomical Record 2005, In Press
 

Newton DA, Acierno PM, Brescia FJ, Brown EA, Gattoni-Celli S. Semi-allogeneic vaccines for patients with cancer and AIDS. J Immunother 2002; 25:334-341.

Newton DA, Romano C, Gattoni-Celli S. Semiallogeneic cell hybrids as therapeutic vaccines for cancer. J Immunother 2000;23: 246-254.

Grene E, Newton DA, Brown EA, Berzofsky JA, Gattoni-Celli S, Shearer GM. Semi-allogeneic cell hybrids stimulate HIV-1 envelope-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes. AIDS 2000; 14:1497-1506.