Dr. Cattaneo

For this week’s blog post, I would like to introduce Dr. Elena Cattaneo, one of the most influential scholars in stem cell therapy area past couple years. Dr. Cattaneo was born in Italy in 1962 and received her Laureo Degree in Pharmacy and PhD in Biotechnology Applied to Pharmacology from University of Milano. After then, she spent 3 years working at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science – M.I.T in Prof. Ronald McKay’s laboratory and started to study neural stem cell differentiation. She is currently a director of the “Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Pharmacology of Neurodegenerative Diseases” at the Department of Biosciences and a co-founder of Unistem, University of Milan’s Centre for Stem Cell Research. In 2013, Dr. Cattaneo was selected as Stem Cell Person of the Year due to her research on the molecular pathophysiology of Huntington’s disease. The research focused on advancing embryonic and induced stem cell biology to obtain the medium-sized spiny striatal neurons that degenerate in Huntington’s disease. This research is significant because inducing stem cells to become neuron cells is the crucial method in order to develop a cure for neurodegenerative diseases. When this cure gets discovered, it is not only limited to Huntington’s disease but also for other diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, ALS and Alzheimer’s disease. Furthermore, Dr. Cattaneo continuously contributed to stem cell therapy area by publishing more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals, tutored more than 100 theses for PhD and graduate students and organized training events for scientific community and the wider public as a part of Unistem activities. Dr. Cattaneo is a great researcher who continuously goes beyond the regular scientific approach and also contributed to scientific community and public with many papers and activities. With scholars like Dr. Cattaneo, stem cell therapy seems like a possible treatment in near future for patients suffering from incurable diseases.