Senior Scientist
Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Italy
Orazio Fortunato, PhD, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori. In 2006 for my MS Degree thesis I joined the AIDS ImmunoPathogenesis Unit (Head:Dr. Poli), at San Raffaele Scientific Institute to study the role of nuclear HMGB1 on HIV-1. I carried out my PhD program of the University of Milano in the laboratory of Prof. Madeddu at the IRCCS Multimedica (Milan) with a project on the role of miRNAs in circulating endothelial progenitor cells of diabetic patients. Luckily, I was able to spend 5 months as a visiting student in Vascular Pathology and Regeneration Unit directed by Dr. Emanueli at the Bristol Heart Unit (Bristol, UK) to improve my skills in the analysis of miRNAs. In 2013 I received an INT fellowship to join Tumor Genomics Unit (head: Dr. Sozzi) on a project on Lung Cancer to study miRNAs in lung cancer and biological fluids. During these past 7 years I have given a major contribution to the study of miRNAs, particularly focusing on the functional studies of those miRNAs de-regulated in lung tumors and plasma samples, such as mir-660 which acts as a tumor suppressor miRNA and its replacement, through lipid-nanoparticles, inhibits p53 wild-type lung tumorigenesis. Recently, I have demonstrated the protumorigenic potential of lung cancer-EVs (Borzi CDD 2019) and I am currently involved in a study of circulating EVs in high-risk of lung cancer individuals. From 2020, I was selected as one of the young “Top Scientist” of our Institute. To date I have contributed to the publication of 28 papers, 13 as first and last author with a total of 957 citations and an h-index of 16 (Scopus). In 2016 I won the AACR-SIC Scholar-in-Training Award for AACR Annual Meeting in New Orleans and in 2017, I was selected for the 2nd Young Investigator Meeting at MD Anderson.