Scopus ID: 23010194100

Dr. Martina Pigazzi, Geneticist, PhD in Oncology, is Assistant Professor at the Woman and Child’s health Department, Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant of the Padua University and Hospital, and the Head of the Genetic Unit at the Onco-Hematology laboratory serving as Italian reference laboratory for pediatric cancer diagnosis. Since 2008, she is the Geneticist Responsible for diagnosis and management of all the Italian patients affected by acute myeloid leukemia and enrolled in the AML2002/01 (enrollment of 482 patients) and AML 2013/01 clinical trials (ongoing-EudraCT 2014-000652-28) sponsored by the Associazione Italiana Emato-Oncologia Pediatrica (AIEOP). Genetic consultancy is provided at diagnosis and during the patients’ follow-up by the study of residual disease after treatment blocks and before and after hematopoietic cell transplantation. She is the representative of the AIEOP LAnL (acute non lymphoblastic leukemia) Group in the international committee “I-BFM MRD-AML Task Force” of the BFM Study Group since 2010. She is Chair of the EU-task-force group “Molecular Genetics of AML” for the international BFM study group since 2018. Since 2004 she is the Leader of the “Molecular Biology of the Acute myeloid leukemia” Group at the Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant lab – Woman and child health Department – working mainly at the identification of new genetic aberrations and mutations with prognostic value to be used as biomarker at diagnosis for risk stratification of patients and tailored therapy. She improved the AML genetic landscape, including the prognostic impact and functional role, of several mutations occurring at diagnosis. She created quantitative assays for determining AML minimal molecular disease during treatment and demonstrated the prognostic role of molecular minimal disease for preemptively recognizing a risk of disease recurrence and refine patients’ clinical management. As part of her academic activity she teaches for the several of the Medical School professional courses, she is an active member of the research and international commissions, and mentored several undergraduate and PhD students. Since 2013 she is Group leader at Pediatric Research Institute Fondazione Citta’ della Speranza. Her research deals with the understanding of leukemogenesis, with particular interest in driver oncogenes and activated pathways for testing of promising alternatives or complementary therapeutics to current chemotherapy by using innovative three-dimensional and animal disease models. More recently, she faced novel research lines toward improving AML therapeutic strategies. She worked at AML metabolism deepening into mitochondria biology and proposed therapeutic opportunities for pediatric AML including mito-inhibitors and non-coding RNA molecules. Moreover, she started a new research line regarding AML tumor selective antigen discovery for immunotherapy and CAR-T approaches for advance in AML treatment. As such, Dr Pigazzi is worldwide recognized as pediatric AML geneticist and included in the board of several international panels with main clinical (PeDAL, ACCELERATE, i-BFM) and biological aims (ITCC-P4) for improving children therapeutics. Her independent research is based on 5 active grants for a total amount of 1.500.000 euro from AIRC, Cariparo, AIL and H2020 funding sources. Her scientific production counts 48 original papers published in peer-reviewed high impact Journals, for half of them being first, last and/or corresponding author (H-index = 22, 1450 total citations).

E-mail: martina.pigazzi@unipd.it