Bio
Dr. Poliseno graduated in Biological Sciences in 2000 and got her PhD in Molecular Biotechnology in 2004, both at University of Pisa, Italy. In 2006, she moved to the US, where she became a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Pier Paolo Pandolfi, first at MSKCC in New York and then at BIDMC-HMS in Boston. In 2009, she started a second post-doc in the lab of Prof. Iman Osman at NYU. In 2012, she was appointed as Principal Investigator of the Oncogenomics Unit of ITT (now ISPRO) and in 2016 she became Staff Scientist at the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the National Research Council in Pisa, Italy, where her lab is located. Throughout her scientific career, her research interests have mostly revolved around non-coding RNAs (microRNAs, pseudogenes, ceRNAs) in cancer. Currently, the activities of the Poliseno lab are focused on the study of the coding and non-coding regulatory networks of BRAFV600E isoforms in melanoma. To this end, they use a wide range of techniques, both in vitro (yeast, melanoma cell lines) and in vivo (melanoma modeling in zebrafish and in the mouse). They are also developing strategies for the selective delivery of drug combinations inside cancer cells, exploiting the attenuated bacterium Listeria monocytogenes.

Bio
Dr. Ghigna earned a Bachelor in Biological Sciences and a PhD in Genetic Sciences from the University of Pavia. With the support of CNR and a Buzzati-Traverso Fellowships in the laboratory of Dr. G. Biamonti (Institute of Molecular Genetic, IGM-CNR) and as Visiting Scientist in the laboratory of Prof. Michael Green (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Massachusetts, Worcester, USA) she contributed to demonstrate the role of aberrant alternative splicing (AS) regulation in cancer. In particular, how alterations in the abundance or activity of AS regulators, which occur frequently in tumors, influence the AS profile of cancer-associated genes contributing to tumor progression. Also, she provided proof-of-concept that cancer-specific AS variants can be targeted for the development of new anti-metastatic therapeutic strategies. As an independent investigator at the IGM-CNR, she is now studying the biological relevance of AS during angiogenesis, a hallmark of cancer. For the first time, her group demonstrated that the AS factor Nova2 is a novel regulator of angiogenesis and the development of the tumor vasculature. These studies demonstrate that AS plays a relevant and so far largely underestimated role in controlling endothelial cells biology offering a new perspective to understand tumor angiogenesis and to identify novel targets for anti-angiogenic therapy. She has national and international collaborations, serves as consultant for several companies, and her research projects have been funded by AIRC (Italian Foundation for Cancer Research), Worldwide Cancer Research (https://www.worldwidecancerresearch.org/), and NextGenerationEU. She serves as reviewer for several major journals and national and international funding bodies.