Lelio Orci (22 March 1937 – 22 October 2019) [1] was an Italian scientist in the field of endocrinology and diabetes and emeritus professor in the Department of Morphology at the University of Geneva Medical School.
He was chair of the Department of Morphology from 1976 until his retirement in 2000, transitioning to professor emeritus.
In the first part of his research career, Orci's laboratory largely studied the organization of the pancreatic islet of Langerhans, as well as the secretion pathway of insulin from the beta cell.
[4] His group was the first to utilize immunogold labelling to localize intracellular proteins (published in 1980),[4][5] and among the first to use freeze-fracture with electron microscopy to study a cell's internal organization.
[9] In a 2020 obituary, Orci was described as having a "strong, flamboyant personality" and "infectious enthusiasm" for science.