Research Activity
Position: Ricercatrice a tempo determinato, tipo B (tenure-track Assistant Professor)
Institution: Section of Pharmacology, Department of Pharmacy – Drug Sciences, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, Via Orabona 4 - CAMPUS, 70125, Bari (Italy)
Lab Head: Annamaria DE LUCA, PhD, Full Professor (annamaria.deluca@uniba.it)
Academic Discipline: BIO/14 – PHARMACOLOGY
Description of Research Activity and Interests
I am involved in the design and execution of preclinical pharmacology studies conducted in predictive murine models of degenerative neuromuscular disorders, including infantile-onset rare genetic conditions (e.g. dystrophinopathies, with a main focus on Duchenne muscular dystrophy), and acquired/late-onset myopathies (e.g. disuse-induced skeletal muscle atrophy, age-related sarcopenia, polymyositis), with no resolutive therapy currently available. The main goals of our research team activity are:
- to provide new insights into the complex pathogenic mechanisms behind these diseases for the identification of novel drug targets;
- to evaluate the potential efficacy and safety of pharmaceutical compounds – either new or repurposed – exerting their action on key disease pathways, as well as of nutraceuticals and dietary supplements, as possibly useful adjuvants of drug treatments.
These objectives are pursued via a rigorous multidisciplinary experimental approach, based on the assessment of both primary and secondary disease-relevant outcomes, according to international guidelines and Standard Operating Procedures (i.e. TREAT-NMD network SOPs), with a specific expertise on in vivo/ex vivo skeletal muscle function and electrophysiology readouts. This approach is applied also to the characterization and validation of animal disease models used for our research, with the final aim to ensure reproducibility, quality and translatability of preclinical studies.
Our research is supported by the active collaboration with other Department members (Nunzio Denora, Section of Pharmaceutical Technologies), national and international academic groups (e.g. Alessandra Ferlini, Università degli Studi di Ferrara; Emilio Clementi, Università degli Studi di Milano; Annemieke Aartsma-Rus, Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands; Marta Fiorotto, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, US; Kanneboyina Nagaraju, Binghamton University, NY, US), drug companies, and charities (e.g. Duchenne Parent Project ONLUS, Charley’s Fund, AFM-Téléthon).