Giulia Biancon

Giulia Biancon strong commitment to blood cancer research started 9 years ago in Prof. Paolo Corradini’s Hematology Laboratory at Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (Milan, Italy). During her Master’s thesis, she investigated the efficacy of drug combinations in peripheral T-cell lymphomas. During her Ph.D. she focused on the study of multiple myeloma, applying next-generation sequencing approaches to assess the role of liquid biopsy in disease monitoring and to identify prognostic markers dissecting the genomic landscape [Biancon G, et al. 2018; Ziccheddu B, Biancon G, et al. 2020]. For her postdoctoral training, she was excited to have the opportunity to investigate myeloid malignancies and RNA biology in the Halene Lab at Yale University School of Medicine (New Haven, CT, USA). Specifically, she demonstrated that mutations in the splicing factor U2AF1, through RNA binding and splicing changes, determine increased stress granule formation in myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukemia [Biancon G, et al. 2022]. Alterations in stress granules, and possibly in other biomolecular condensates, may represent a unifying strategy deployed by splicing factor-mutant cells to promote their clonal advantage and, therefore, a novel therapeutic vulnerability. Throughout these years, she established several collaborations in the RNA field, as organizer of the Yale Center for RNA Science and Medicine, and in the fight against blood cancers and COVID-19 [Li P*, Biancon G*, et al. 2021; Kim D*, Biancon G*, et al. 2022]. Her long-term career goal is to lead a research team focused on hematological malignancies where molecular and computational biology combine to improve patient care.