“We study spontaneous animal tumour models to improve health of both animals and humans with cancer”

I'm a veterinary pathologist, graduated with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Teramo (Italy) in 2003. After completing a residency program at the School of Veterinary Medicine of Bern (Switzerlands), I became a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Pathologists (ECVP) in 2011. I was Assistant professor in Veterinary Pathology and teacher of Cellular Pathophysiology at the University of Teramo (Italy), from 2005 to 2016, before joining Utrecht University in January 2017. Since 2022 I am Associate Professor and teacher of General Pathology at the University of Teramo, Italy. 

My main research interests are veterinary and comparative oncology and dermatopathology. For many years, I focused my research on the study of animals spontaneously developping cancer that could represent a valid model for the study of human cancers, such as the canine mucosal melanoma. 

Studying canine and feline cancers we want to find new therapeutic approaches and biomarkers, based on extracellular vesicles, that can be applied on veterinary patients and can potentially be translated to human cancer patients. 

I also have expertise on the pathological analyses of diseased tissue samples, immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence, as well as laboratory animal models analyses (liver, lung and kidney pathology, cancer, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and age-related lesions).