Mattia Apollonio

After the Bachelor’s degree in biological sciences at the University of Molise (Italy), Mattia moved to Trieste where in 2017 he obtained a master’s degree in Functional Genomics. During an academic internship at the Laboratorio Nazionale CIB in the group of Prof. Licio Collavin, he studied the tumor suppressor DAB2IP as a key target of mutant p53 in the response of cancer cells to insulin stimulation.
Supported by a fellowship of Fondo Sociale Europeo in Friuli Venezia Giulia (FSE 2014-2020), in 2021 Mattia obtained his PhD in Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Trieste (Italy). With the supervision of Prof. Licio Collavin, he continued studying the tumor suppressor DAB2IP focusing on the role of the mechanical forces from the tissue microenvironment. In particular, he studied the mechanisms that influence DAB2IP function in response to the cell-cell contact and extracellular matrix stiffness in tumor and non-tumor cells.
In February 2022, Mattia moved to Siena to work as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Fondazione Toscana Life Sciences with Dr. Anna Kabanova and, in collaboration with the “Monoclonal Antibody Discovery Laboratory” (MAD Lab) coordinated by Dr. Rino Rappuoli, he works in developing mRNA-based therapies against infectious diseases and seeks to apply this technology to tumors in the future.

Research Group: