Organizers

Gerry Melino is an Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy). He is a Member of Accademia Lincei & Accademia Europaea. Prof Melino is Founder & Editor-in-Chief of 3 journals – Cell Death Differentiation (IF 12.1), Cell Death Disease (IF 9.7), and Cell Death Discovery (IF 7.1), as well as a member of several other Editorial Boards and Scientific Advisor for several Governmental Institutions. His training originated in Rome, Italy, where he obtained his M.D. (1978, University of Rome) followed by clinical specialisations in Paediatrics (1981) and Clinical Oncology (1985); the Ph.D. (1984) was at the University of London, UK, where he became Consultant. His scientific interest with almost 700 papers (H-index 105; Citations 56000) are focused on programmed cell death in epidermal and neural models, and in particular on the p53 family – p63 and p73, in cancer progression.

Mauro Piacentini is an Emeritus Professor at University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy. He is also on the Board of Directors for the European Cell Death Organization and is Basic Research Director at the National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome. Since 1993, he has been the Founder and an Editor of the journal Cell Death & Differentiation. Prof. Piacentini has organized several international meetings including the 14th Euroconference on “Apoptosis or Programmed Cell Death”. His research interest is to understand the molecular mechanisms regulating apoptosis and autophagy under both physiological and pathological conditions. In particular, he is interested in the pathogenesis of Huntington’s disease with particular regard to the role of TG2 and mitochondria. He is also studying infectious diseases such as HIV and HCV. With autophagy, he is characterizing the role of Ambra1, a key component of the Beclin1 complex.

Giorgio Stassi is Head of the Cellular and Molecular Pathophysiology Laboratory at the Department of Precision Medicine in Medical, Surgical and Critical Care (Me.Pre.C.C.) of the University of Palermo. In the last years his scientific interest has been focused on the study of the role that cancer stem cells have in the onset and the progression in different tumors of epithelial origin such as colon, breast and thyroid tumors. He has brought mechanisms to light that regulate epithelial tumor cells’ survival and resistance to conventional therapy. These results have significantly contributed to cancer research, allowing him to issue a patent that enables the development of innovative cancer therapies. He was appointed one of the first to isolate stem cells from colon and thyroid tumors. The advanced development of this system has ulteriorly confirmed its innovative contribution to cancer research leading to attractive discoveries, which have paved the way to designing new “tailored” and more effective anti-cancer strategies.