One, No one, One Hundred Thousand - The Multifaceted Role of Macrophages in Health and Disease - Part A

After defending an experimental thesis on malignant haematopoiesis, Samanta Mariani obtained a Master’s Degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy). She then moved to Milan to join an international PhD programme on Cellular and Molecular Biology held by the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University and the Open University of London. During the four years of her PhD in Professor Guido Poli’s laboratory, she worked on HIV-1 biology. After successfully defending her PhD thesis, she decided to move to the United States to experience a new research environment and broaden her scientific expertise. Changing scientific topics between the Master’s and PhD led to her fascination in human haematopoiesis and the desire to find a postdoc in that field. Thus, she joined the laboratory of Professor Bruno Calabretta at the Thomas Jefferson University of Philadelphia. At the end of 2014, she joined Professor Elaine Dzierzak's laboratory for a second postdoc at the University of Edinburgh. Here she worked on different projects focused on steady-state developmental haematopoiesis and immunology. In 2021, she was awarded a Chancellor's Fellowship, a John Goldman Fellowship and entry to the ESAT tenure-track programme at the University of Edinburgh. This allowed her to open up a new line of research on embryonic macrophages and their role in health and disease, with a special focus on normal and malignant foetal/infant haematopoiesis. Dr Cassetta is a co-Founder of Macomics and is an immunologist with in-depth knowledge of human myeloid cell biology applied to different human diseases. He obtained a PhD in immunology at the S.Raffaele Institute in Milan studying the role of macrophage polarization in HIV pathogenesis; he then moved to NY at the Albert Einstein Medical College in the lab of Prof. Jeffrey Pollard where he studied Tumor Associated Macrophages in breast cancer. He then moved to the University of Edinburgh continuing his studies on TAMs where he established his own lab as principal investigator. His extensive experience in human macrophage biology contributed to the development of the Macomics screening platform. Dr Cassetta is an author of multiple publications in high-impact international scientific journals including Cancer Cell, Nature Communications, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Blood, PNAS, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. He was awarded the Innovation Prize cup 2019 as a young entrepreneur for the spinout company, Macomics. Dr Cassetta joined Macomics full time as VP Immunology in 2021.