Profile

I’m from Italy and Italy is where my family is. I did my bachelor and master degree in Pisa and then moved to London for my PhD. Whenever I can, I love to travel back and spent time with my family in my country as I do miss them. At the same time, I love being in Scotland and enjoy long walks after work when possible ( and when the weather allows it!)

In my project I look at how the immune system function using a murine model of influenza and  comparing it with a melanoma ( tumour of the skin) model. Particularly, I focus on dendritic cells activation as these cells are very important for getting a proper T cell immune response. When we have influenza in fact, our immune system is able to recognise the virus and fight it back and in theory this should happen during cancer development as well. However, it is now know that different cancer cells are able to escape the T cells response and therefore being able to growth in our body. Here I am investigating what are the difference in these two conditions and if we can do something to improve our immune system to recognise and fight cancer. I look at organs like lymph nodes, lungs and tumours.

Depending on the day and the experiments, i will go to the lab earlier than 8. I will start to prepare my sample and usually this involve a lot of steps in which i digest the tissues of interest in order to have a single cells suspension. After that, I will label the cells with specific antibodies so i can then recognise  them later on and ask questions about how their number chance in a tumour settings vs influenza or how their activation status change for example. Sometimes I have imaging to do, so I will prepare my tissue by slicing it using a particular machine and then add some antibodies that will allow to see cells under the microscope. All the experiments that I do are a bit long but I am not alone in the lab, so time just flies 🙂