Phd in LIFE SCIENCE

email: francesca.cutruzzola@uniroma1.it
phone: 0649910955
building: CU027
room: T6

SHORT CV (ENGLISH)

Francesca Cutruzzolà obtained her degree in Biology and ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Sapienza University of Rome. Since 1994 she enrolled in the same University as an assistant Professor and in 2000 she became Associate Professor of Biochemistry.
From 2011 she is Full Professor of Molecular Biology in the Department of Biochemical Sciences “A.Rossi Fanelli” of Sapienza University.

She has spent several periods abroad, for her PhD, post-doc and as a visiting scientist, working at the following institutions: Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (USA), ETH Politechnic Zurich (CH), Univ. of California-Davis (USA), Univ. of Leiden (NL), Weizmann Institute of Science (IL) and the MRC Toxicology Unit, Leicester (UK) .
She is author of more than 100 papers published in peer-reviewed international journals (H-index 28) and one patent; she has been invited to present her work in over 30 national and international meetings.
Her research is funded by national (MIUR, CNR, Sapienza Univ., Institute Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti, AIRC, Cystic Fibrosys Foundation) and international agencies (EU). She has ongoing collaborations with european and international groups.
She is expert project reviewer for MIUR (ERC LS1-1, LS1-2) and ANVUR (GEV 05/06) of Italy; ad hoc reviewer for J.Biol.Chem, Biochemistry, ARS, J.Inorg Chem, Curr.Op.Microb., Nature Reviews Microbiology and other international journals.
In 2012, the research group of prof. Cutruzzolà has been selected as one of the three best european research groups in the European Life Science Awards.

From 2021 Work Package Leader MOSBRI (Molecular Scale Biophysical research Infrastructure)
From 2019, Coordinator of the PhD Course in Life Sciences (Sapienza)
From 2014 she is a member of the Scientific Board of Directors of Institute Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti (Italy).

2019-2022 Secretary of the Italian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
2016-2020 Italian Member of the Management Committee Cost Action 15126 Mobieu Between Atom and Cell: Integrating Molecular Biophysics Approaches for Biology and Healthcare (2016-2020).
2014-2020, Membro ERC (European Research Council) Grants Evaluation panels .

The scientific activity of Francesca Cutruzzolà is focused on the molecular aspects of nucleotide metabolism in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. The goal of her research is to understand how proteins involved in these processes function, and how they control specific aspects of cell behavior, using a multidisciplinary approach encompassing Biochemistry, Structural Biology, Molecular and Cell Biology.
Her research group is now moving one step ahead, trying to couple basic research to translational studies, in order to identify inhibitors of selected protein targets.

The main research lines are focused on:
- metabolic reprogramming in cancer cells ageing and neural diseases.
- metabolism of small dinucleotides involved in the formation of bacterial biofilm in chronic infections;
- role of nitric oxide and redox metabolism in bacterial pathogens and eukaryotic cells.
Bibliometric parameters: over 140 publications; carrier H-index 37 (Scopus)

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4621-2135