I am a cancer biologist with 25 years of experience in the field of basic and translational cancer research. I was trained first in Italy, as graduate and PhD student, and then in the US, where I performed two post-docs in top-notch institutions and labs. Back in Italy, in 2012 I became an independent investigator (PI of the Oncogenomics Unit at IFC-CNR and CRL-ISPRO).

Throughout my scientific career, my research interests have been mostly focused on establishing the role played by non-coding RNAs (microRNAs, pseudogenes, ceRNAs) in cancer, as well as on developing strategies for their therapeutic exploitation.

As a post-doc in the Pandolfi lab, I discovered miR-106b~25 as an intronic cluster that is all composed by PTEN-targeting microRNAs, gets overexpressed/amplified in cancer and cooperates with its host gene MCM7 in cell transformation, both in vitro and in a transgenic mouse model of prostate tumorigenesis. I also contributed to the discovery that PTENP1 pseudogenic RNA sustains the expression of the mRNA of its parental gene PTEN, because it competes for the binding to shared microRNAs, i.e. it acts as competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA).

Currently, my lab is focused on melanoma, a cancer type where BRAFV600E oncogenic protein stands as a cancer driver and an elective therapeutic target. Specifically, we study the transcript variants of BRAFV600E, in terms of: regulation of expression; kinase-(in)dependent and coding-(in)dependent functions; modulators, interactors and effectors. To do so, we take advantage of a wide range of techniques: in silico (omics approaches), in vitro (yeast, melanoma cell lines), in vivo (melanoma modeling in zebrafish and in the mouse), and ex vivo (melanoma specimens). The research interests of my lab are also focused on solving an issue that remains critical in cancer therapy: how to achieve selective drug delivery inside cancer cells. Specifically, we exploit attenuated Listeria monocytogenes (Lmat), an anticancer vaccine characterized by selective accumulation in the TME, as “intelligent” carrier of the drugs of our choosing (chemotherapeutics, targeted drugs, RNA-based drugs).