Dr. C. Di Vito started her professional experience investigating the megakaryocytic differentiation of human cord blood hematopoietic stem cells and human platelet functionality in physiologic conditions and in myeloproliferative diseases. She completed her PhD Program in Molecular Medicine at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Eastern Piedmont, Novara, under the supervision of Prof. F. Sinigaglia with the final thesis: “Role of estrogens and phytoestrogens in megakaryocytic differentiation and platelet function”. In 2011 she moved to the Laboratory of the Department of Medical Biotechnology and Translational Medicine, University of Milano, where she investigated the sphingolipid role in human cancer aggressiveness. She mainly focused her attention on: a) the sphingosine-1-phosphate role in determining cell proliferation, angiogenesis, survival and stemness of primary human glioblastoma stem-like cells and endothelial cells in an autocrine/paracrine manner; b) the ability of platelets, isolated from glioblastoma patients, to release pro-angiogenic molecules, including sphingosine-1-phosphate and VEGF.
In 2016 Dr. C. Di Vito joined the Laboratory of Clinical and Experimental Immunology under the supervision of Prof. D. Mavilio where she currently leads a research team involved in different translational projects aim at investigate: – the kinetic of innate immune cell immune-reconstitution and the impact of viral infections in determining the expansion of Natural Killer cells endowed with memory-like features in patients affected by hematologic malignancies undergoing bone marrow transplantations; – phenotypic and functional characterization of innate lymphoid cells in determining the clinical outcome of Myelodisplastic syndromes and the Acute Myeloid Leukemia risk progression.
In these years Dr. C. Di Vito won different fellowships and research grants to support her projects:
– Ricerca Finalizzata 2016, Change-promoting, Italian Ministry of Health, Proposal: RF-2016-02364099; Unit responsible, researcher under 40;
– Fondazione Umberto Veronesi Post-Doctoral Fellowship-2018, Proposal: 1976;
– Fondazione Umberto Veronesi Post-Doctoral Fellowship-2017, Proposal: 1464.
Moreover, in 2017 she won the prestigious short-term fellowship from EMBO that allowed her to spend three months as a guest scientist at the Institute for Virology, Medical School of The University of Essen, Germany.
Her current H Index is 12 (Scopus).