Associate Professor

I began my experience in the field of psychiatric neuroscience in 2003, when I joined the Psychiatric Neuroscience Group of the University of Bari “Aldo Moro”. Since then, my research interest has been shifted from the genetic mechanisms underlying major psychiatric disorders to the use of polygenic risk scores (PRS) to predict the risk of psychosis and the outcome of antipsychotic treatments. In 2008 I joined the human molecular genetics laboratory at the University of Edinburgh, UK, where I studied the role of the DISC1 gene in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. This experience allowed me to move my research activity from a national to an international context. In 2015 I started a fruitful collaboration with Prof. Martin Beaulieu at Laval University, Quebec, where I had the opportunity to delve deeper into mine interest in the biological basis of the mechanism of action of Antipsychotics. Therefore, my scientific interests are oriented in the direction of pharmacogenomics with particular attention to the side effects of psychotropic drugs. Consistently, in 2019 I received funding from the Ministry of Economic Development for a joint venture between
University and industry aimed at exploring the interaction between the genetic risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) induced by Antipsychotics and the use of a functional paste on the severity of this condition. This project led to production of a flour with proven nutraceutical properties that has been patented as a functional product by the company producer.
In addition, the project gave me the possibility to establish a public hospital service for identification, the evaluation and treatment of side effects induced by psychotropic drugs, within which we recruited over 400 patients with MetS, at least partly related to the use of such drugs. We have shown that a PRS for mets predicts weight gain in patients undergoing this therapy and that direct exposure of hepatocytes commercial and adipocytes derived from individual-specific stem cells (with known PRS), antipsychotics and extracts nutraceuticals, induces a PRS-dependent molecular modification in cells.