Professor Serena Zacchigna

Serena Zacchigna received her MD in Trieste (Italy) in 2000. After her PhD at the International School for Advanced Studies, Italy, she moved to VIB in Leuven (Belgium) as a Marie-Curie post-doctoral research fellow to work on the neurovascular link. In 2009 she returned to Trieste, where she first joined the Molecular Medicine Laboratory at the ICGEB and then established her own research group in 2015. Since 2016 she joined the University of Trieste. She represents the ICGEB at the UN Agency Committee for Bioethics, with particular interest in the regulatory and ethical aspects governing the use of gene therapy and genome editing. She is a Nucleus Member of the WG on Myocardial Function of the ESC. Her work focuses on the cross-talk between the various cell types residing in the heart. In particular, she is dissecting the mechanisms mediating he communication between endothelial cells and cardiomyocytes, with the goal of promoting cardiac regeneration and re-vascularization.