Prof. Cristina Bombieri is an associate professor of applied biology at the Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona. She obtained a degree in biological sciences (University of Padova, Italy) and a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology and pathology (University of Verona, Italy). Her main research fields are human biology and molecular genetics, with a specific interest in the alternative splicing regulation mediated by ribonucleoproteins, the development of cell models to study the molecular basis of diseases, and the identification of genetic factors involved in the development, progression and/or severity of Mendelian and complex diseases, mainly of the respiratory system, such as cystic fibrosis and CFTR gene-related diseases, asthma, COPD and rhinitis. She is a member of the Italian Association of General and Molecular Biology and Genetics (AIBG) and of the Italian Society of Human Genetics (SIGU). She also serves as a peer-reviewer for several scientific journals.

N/A

Prof. Elisabetta Trabetti is an associate professor at the Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. She obtained her B.Sc. in biology from the University of Padova and her Ph.D. in forensic toxicology at the University of Verona. In 1995, she carried out research activities as a research fellow in molecular biology laboratories at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA. She served as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Verona from 1999 to 2014 and became an associate professor in 2014. Her research activities mainly focus on genetic susceptibility to complex diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, asthma and autism, through candidate gene, genome-wide and differential gene expression analyses, as well as NGS techniques. She is also a member of the Italian Society of Human Genetics (SIGU) and the Italian Society of Biology and Genetics (AIBG).

Dr. Alessandra Ruggiero is a junior researcher at the Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in genetics and molecular biology from Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza in 2009, her master’s degree in genetics and molecular biology from Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza in 2011 and her Ph.D. in medicine and virology from the University of Liverpool in 2016. Currently, she is working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù, working in pediatric HIV immunology and vaccinology. She is also a member of the Society for General Microbiology, the British Society for Immunology and the British HIV Association.

Dr. Giulia Marchetto is a researcher in the field of muscle disorders at the Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona in Verona, Italy.

Prof. Gaetano Vattemi is an associate professor in neurology and clinical neurologist at the Section of Clinical Neurology, Department of Neurological and Movement Sciences, University of Verona. He obtained his medical degree (MD) from the University of Catania with honors in 1994 and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Verona in 2004. His research interests include idiopathic inflammatory myopathies, sporadic inclusion body myositis (s-IBM), myofibrillar myopathies, Brody disease, Brody syndrome and mitochondrial disease. He is also a member of the Italian Association of Myology (AIM).

Dr. Maria Teresa Valenti graduated in biological science in 1993 and performed a medical residency in biochemistry and clinical chemistry in 1998 at the University of Padua, where she also received a financial grant (for a project related to molecular biology in muscle diseases) from the National Research Council (CNR) under the supervision of Prof. Stefano Schiaffino. She earned her Ph.D. in “chronic and degenerative diseases” in 2006 from the University of Verona by studying telomerase gene expression in degenerative diseases. From 1996 to 2006, she worked at the Department of Oncology of Noale (VE), where she performed studies related to stem cells and the stromal environment during cellular transformation. Since 2006, she has been working at the Department of Medicine, and she is the leader of the research group for gene expression studies on chronic and degenerative diseases at Verona University. She is also a member of the Associazione Italiana di Colture Cellulari (AICC) and SIB.

Prof. Donato Zipeto is an associate professor of molecular biology at the Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. He obtained a degree in biological sciences (summa cum laude, 110L) from the University of Pavia, Italy, in 1989, and then worked as a Ph.D. fellow in infectious diseases at Stanford University, California, USA, and as an MSCA Fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. His research interests include the analysis of the interactions between viral and cellular proteins, MHC-I variants, neurodegenerative diseases and genome editing (CRISPR/Cas9). He is also a member of several scientific societies, including the Italian Society of Biophysics and Molecular Biology (SIBBM), the Italian Society for Virology (SIV-ISV) and the Marie Curie Fellows Association (MCFA). He teaches molecular biology at the Faculty of Medicine. He is a member of the Ph.D. scientific committee on “Life Sciences and Health”. He has 78 publications with 2482 citations and an h-index of 25 (Web of Science, 11 January 2024).

Prof. Maria Grazia Romanelli is a full-time professor in experimental biology—School of Medicine at the University of Verona, Italy. She was a research fellow at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cellular Biology at the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1990. She was a visiting researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. In 2016, she was an honorary fellow at the University of Leicester. Her research interests include cell models in cancer and cardiovascular diseases, virus–cell interactions (HSV, HTLV, HIV), post-transcriptional regulation (alternative splicing, miRNA) and the regulation of cell signaling (NF-kB pathway). She teaches applied biology at the Faculty of Medicine. She is a member of the Ph.D. scientific committee on “Life Sciences and Health”. She has 90 publications with 1290 citations and an h-index of 21(Scopus, 11 December 2023).