This is a story full of stories. Volleyball player by day, scholar by night. A first phase of life spent between dunks on the pitch and books, research and science. And in the end, science wins. His name is Leonardo Morsut, born in 1980, 1.99 meters tall, two degrees. One in medical biotechnology, the other in mathematics. Renowned volleyball player, spiker role, a champion. One of the greatest promises of Italian volleyball. At a certain point in his life he gives up everything to go into a laboratory to do research. His mission: to understand how an embryo is born from a cell and how life is created. To be able to engineer it. Today he is an Assistant Professor in the department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at University of Southern California (USC) of Los Angeles, and is considered the genius of stem cells. In his laboratory he builds organoids, i.e. replicas of human organs and tissues that can be used for personalized medicine.
Mother an accountant, father Italian teacher, a cousin who dies at 15 from a genetic disease. «In retrospect I understood that that event influenced my choice to study genetics and understand its mechanisms». At just 18 years old, Leonardo was already playing in Serie A, first in Padova, then in Trento. He plays in the World League, prepares for the Olympics. «This is the track with which I can tell you about my life up to that point. But in parallel there is another story: I have always wanted to be a scientist. I don’t remember a part of my life without this dream.” So at the age of 25 at the peak of his career as a champion, he decides to leave everything and accepts a 10-fold reduction in his wages to do research in a university laboratory for 800 euros a month. Piero Angela is struck by this extraordinary story and calls him to SuperQuark.
«Playing was my job, I trained twice a day, I earned a lot, but my dream was elsewhere. When I arrived in Trentino Volley, where I spent a year at a very high level, inside me I felt that I was wasting time. I had two separate lives and always had to fight to make everything fit.”
At the age of 25, Leonardo returned to the University of Padua for a doctorate in developmental biology, which is the study of how an embryo is born from a single cell. Meanwhile he enrolled in a second degree: Mathematics. «I did my doctorate in an excellent laboratory, with a space team, we did research which was then cited more than 5 thousand times. But I understood that the level of understanding we had of these mechanisms was still limited. I asked myself: what if we made mathematical models to understand more?
After completing his doctorate and second degree, he became increasingly passionate about Systems Biology, i.e. the computational and mathematical analysis of the complex systems underlying development. And in particular to a sister discipline, the so-called Synthetic Biology: synthetic biology. «It was love at first sight: it is a discipline that aims to understand the biological system so well that it can be engineered and controlled in a predictive way»
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Thanks to the work done in Padua, he ends up in one of the top synthetic biology laboratories in the world, in San Francisco. Here he patents a synthetic receptor with his colleague Kole Roybal. «It’s called Syn-Notch. Powerful, simple, inspired by a natural receptor, with many applications, especially in new anti-tumor cell therapies, which use the patient’s own cells and engineer them with a synthetic receptor to kill the tumor cell.”
The colleague will decide to create a startup. “For me then it meant selling my soul to the devil.” He aims to become a professor: he applies, they take him, they give him two million dollars to create a laboratory, hire people and do research. «In my laboratory I use this technology to better understand how cells organize themselves when they give rise to a tissue or organ and how to use stem cells to create organoids»
And how are they organised? «In recent years we have understood that cells work as a group: they talk to each other to decide who does the head, who does the heart, who does the right, who does the left. The way they speak to each other is determined by a system of signals and receptors. I send you a signal, you receive it with a receptor on your membrane. As happens in a work group, where 6-7 people meet, talk to each other and divide tasks: this is what happens with cells”
What is the use of knowing this? «Embryonic development is like a technology with which to build organs and tissues. This technology was “invented” by Mother Nature who spent millions of years making trials, errors and selections and found a way to write a genetic code that builds a functioning organism. We have the opportunity to learn how to write a genetic code with which to build an organ, we can do it as we want or replace what is already there. Or we can create models of diseased patient livers to test personalized drugs in the laboratory. Science fiction? When I was at university, making organoids in the laboratory was science fiction, now it’s no longer science fiction…”
What made the difference for you? «A kick in the ass, can you say? Being in the right place at the right time. Have a nose. In Padua, I joined a project because it seemed cool to me and only after years did we see its impact. And then, in the post-doc, I chose synthetic biology, a new field that everyone warned me about, – we don’t know anything, they told me: it’s a shot in the dark – and instead I found myself in San Francisco, in an incredible laboratory. The right place, at the right time. A perfect storm. So we invented this synthetic receptor which has very great applications”
What does your story teach? «It’s unusual for a volleyball player to go and do a doctorate. Or that a developmental biologist does synthetic biology. But I felt it was the only thing to do. I had a strong feeling that it was important. Well, if you feel like there’s something you want to do, even if it’s not the most obvious thing or what others recommend you do, do it anyway. In this strategy it is important to find someone who supports you. I went looking for a sort of technical niche. People to talk to. To those who replied: “You’re crazy”, I said ok then I won’t talk to you anymore. Whoever was more open to listening to me and said: ‘Great idea, how do you plan to do it?’, became the person I spoke to.”
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For 10 years, Leonardo has lived in America, first in San Francisco and now in Los Angeles: he has an Italian wife, Sabina, who is a humanist and works at the Huntington Art Museum. And she leads a virtual reality project focused on medieval manuscripts at USC. They have two children, aged 10 and 6, with dual citizenship. Ten years after the first interviews, Leonardo is once again living two parallel lives. Next year he will apply for a new professorship. But for the first time, if he doesn’t win and doesn’t manage to realize his dream, this won’t change anything. He has begun a journey of internal growth.
«I experienced a very dark period of crisis in my life. Which has always been characterized by competitiveness. For me, finishing second was not acceptable. My worth and self-esteem depended solely on my victories. If I lost, I felt empty. However, this is not the case. But I discovered it after years of therapy, meditation and yoga. They opened up a completely unknown world to me, which is the world of how to talk about your inner life. I’ve always had an interior life but I had big problems relating to it. I understood that our value depends only on being alive and existing. Sure we can do beautiful things with our talents, simple things or complicated things, but what is truly special is being alive and having the perceptions of this universe. This is why I say that it doesn’t matter if I get the professorship or if I don’t get it: my self-esteem, my value will not change one iota. It’s a complete paradigm shift. Which gives me a lot of peace of mind. In my life, there is a before and after this mental attitude. Many sectors of modern society, including the world of science, seem far from this awareness, even if I see signs of change in a good direction. A lesson I learned? Being kind to yourself is the first step to happiness.”
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