Dr. Claudia Ghigna

Institute of Molecular Genetics Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, National Research Council (IGM-CNR), Via Abbiategrasso, 207, 27100 Pavia (PV), Italy;
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.