He got his master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology in 2005 working at the European Institute of Oncology, Milan, under the supervision of Prof. Giuliana Pelicci. Subsequently, he moved to the Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, where he got his PhD in Experimental Pathology and Neuropathology in 2012, under the supervision of Prof. Paola Allavena. His principal interest was the role of inflammation in the establishment and progression of cancer, in particular on colorectal cancer, a paradigm of the cancer-related inflammation. He investigated the expression of chemokines and chemokine receptors in human colorectal cancer, demonstrating that their expression is strongly upregulated in tumor tissues. Concomitantly, he began to study the role of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in the onset and progression of different types of tumors, with a specific interest on the role of phenotypically distinct macrophage sub-sets. He focused his attention on a specific population of colonic-resident macrophages, marked out by the expression of CX3CR1, whose role is to maintain homeostasis and control the inflammatory levels of the intestinal mucosa. During his career, he had the opportunity to acquire a strong experience in the field of imaging, acquiring skills in different advanced microscopy techniques such as TIRF, FLIM, FRAP and Super-Resolution microscopy (STED).
Combining the experience acquired in both preclinical models and imaging, in 2014 he has set up the optical in vivo imaging at the Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, setting different protocols for the visualization of in vivo biological processes.
In 2016, he was awarded with a UICC International Cancer Technology Transfer Fellowship (ICRETT) by the Union for International Cancer Control to spent a period at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, USA under the supervision of Professor Roberto Weigert, working in the field of Intravital Microscopy.
Starting from 2016, he began to set up protocols to study neo-angiogenesis and immune response in different experimental model of inflammation and cancer by 2-photon intravital microscopy.