Irene Gallina is an Italian molecular biologist. After obtaining her master’s degree at the University of Padova, she moved to Denmark, where she spent most of her career specializing in the study of the mechanisms that preserve the integrity of the genome. She obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Copenhagen, implementing high-throughput genetic and fluorescence microscopy techniques to identify novel proteins involved in the repair of DNA breaks. After a short postdoc at the Department of Biology studying repair mechanisms during cell division, she joined the newly established group of Associate Professor Julien Duxin at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research. Here, she mastered the in vitro Xenopus laevis egg extract model system, to study mechanisms of DNA replication and repair. Taking advantage of this system, and in close collaboration with experts in proteomics and deep genome sequencing, she identified a protein that is an essential regulator of multiple DNA repair pathways, and a possible target for cancer therapy. In the end of 2021, Irene joined the group of Professor Sara Richter at the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padova with a Marie Sklodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, setting the bases to investigate the replication of human oncogenic viruses.
With this ERC-StG project, she aims at adopting novel approaches to shed light on the mechanisms by which such viruses can replicate their genome in the cells of infected individuals, and at finding ways to target these processes to prevent viral propagation and cancer formation.