Born in Rome (Italy) on 1 May 1963, Dario Neri studied at the Liceo Classico E.S. Piccolomini in Siena and Chemistry at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, graduating in 1987 with a thesis on the synthesis and characterization of complex polyunsaturated secondary metabolites, isolated from higher plants. In 1992, he earned his doctorate in chemistry under Professor Kurt Wüthrich at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics of the ETH Zurich. His dissertation was awarded the ETH Zurich silver medal. With an EU Bridge Bursary, he spent four years at the Cambridge Centre for Protein Engineering, Medical Research Council, where he worked under the supervision of Sir Gregory Winter. He has now been a Professor at the ETH Zurich since 1996.   

The research of the group Neri focuses on the engineering of therapeutic antibodies for the therapy of cancer and other angiogenesis-related disorders. Other research activities include the chemical proteomic discovery of novel vascular markers of pathology and the development of DNA-encoded chemical libraries.     

Dario Neri has published over 180 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is inventor in numerous patents. He is the recipient of the ISOBM Abbott Prize 2000, of the Amgen-DompeÂ' Biotec Award 2000, of the Mangia dÂ'Oro 2001, of the Prous Award 2006 of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry, of the Robert-Wenner-Prize 2007 of the Swiss Cancer League and of the SWISS BRIDGE Award 2008   

In 1996, together with his brother Duccio and Giovanni, Dario Neri founded Philogen , a biotech company with headquarters in Siena (Italy) and in Zurich (Switzerland). Philogen has brought seven antibody products into multicenter Phase I and Phase II clinical trials in patients with cancer.