Benedetta Donati

Role: Born in Pavullo nel Frignano (MO) on 23 April 1987, I graduated in Medical Biotechnologies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2011.

During my thesis intership, I took part in a project for the identification of the molecular basis of Facioscapolohumeral muscolar distrophy and I had the opportunity to spend a short period of two months at the University of Massachussets in USA. After master degree I moved to the University of Milan, where in 2017 I obtained my PhD in “Clinical and Experimental Medicine” with a research focused on the identification of genetic risk factors of predisposition towards onset and progression of Hepatocellular carcinoma. The aim was to identify usefull biomarkers that might be considered for non-invasive screening of patients at risk of disease progression and to find new putative therapeutic target.

Since February 2017, I am a post-doctoral researcher at the ASMN Research Hospital in Reggio Emilia, where I work in the Cancer Genomics unit of the Laboratory of Translational Research. My research activity is focused on the use of Next Generation Sequencing tecniques for the characterization of the genetic and expression profiles of different kind of cancer tissues.

In particular I am taking part in a project aimed to define a genetic classification for the Neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas (PNETs). Thanks to the close collaboration with clinicians we have the possibility to correlate the genetic data with disease onset, progression and survival and to individuate molecules of interest for new therapeutic approaches. Moreover I collaborate with my colleagues in order to support the genome wide experiments included in their research projects.

E-mail: benedetta.donati@ausl.re.it