The Academician Laurentiu Mircea Popescu passed away

Professor Ioanel Sinescu, Rector of the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest and Member of the Romanian Academy, announced yesterday, with great sorrow, that the Academician Laurentiu Mircea Popescu – one of the brightest and most valued personalities which the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy has ever had – passed away on August 3, 2015. Together with his team at the Victor Babes Institute and the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Professor Laurentiu Mircea Popescu identified a new group of cells – “Telocytes” - with a promising regenerative potential, a discovery that opens new paths and anticipates a radical change in the therapies aimed at repairing damaged tissues. Telocytes are a newly described type of interstitial cell, found in most organs and characterized by the presence of lengthy extensions (telopodes), visible by transmission electron microscopy – Popescu LM, Faussone-Pellegrini MS. TELOCYTES – a case of serendipity: the winding way from Interstitial Cells of Cajal (ICC), via Interstitial Cajal-Like Cells (ICLC) to TELOCYTES. J Cell Mol Med. 2010; 14: 729–40 – quoted also recently by the prestigious Wiley Online Library, in a “Short Communication, J. Cell. Mol. Med. Vol 18, No 10, 2015 pp. 1938-1943, entitled “Extracellular vesicles release by cardiac telocytes: electron microscopy and electron tomography”, the authors being Emanuel T. Fertig, Mihaela Gherghiceanu, Laurentiu M. Popescu.

It is worth remembering that on April 9, 2009, the Academician Laurentiu Mircea Popescu, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, was a Member of the Presidium of the SANABUNA Conference held at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, reconfirming also, on this special occasion, that competency is one of the hallmarks of professionalism, the foundation of competency being the expertise understood as knowledge plus experience.

May God rest his soul in peace!