Barbara Cassani is junior group leader at Humanitas Research Hospital, where she leads the Immunity and Immunodeficiency Lab, and Assistant Professor of Histology at University of Milan.

Cassani graduated in pharmacology at the University of Milan and obtained her PhD in molecular and cellular biology at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University while working in the labs of the San Raffaele-Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, in Milan, on the pathogenic mechanisms and gene therapy of primary immunodeficiencies.

After a post-doctoral fellowship awarded by the Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, USA, she came back to Italy as a CNR researcher and started her independent scientific career at Humanitas Research Hospital, where she now leads a research group studying mucosal immunology and adaptive immunity in immunodeficiency, autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Cassani’s research has been funded, among others, by the Italian Ministry of Health, the Italian Ministry of University and Research, CARIPLO Foundation and Telethon Foundation.