Antonia Follenzi

Antonia Follenzi graduated in Medicine (1992) and received a PhD (2001) in Human Oncology from the University of Torino working with Prof. L. Naldini in the gene therapy field. Since 2017 she has been a faculty professor of Tissue Biology at the University of Piemonte Orientale in Novara.

Her current research focuses on optimizing gene transfer for hemophilia A by modulating FVIII expression using novel promoters to further restrict FVIII expression to specific cell types that will lead to the immune tolerance of the coagulation factor VIII. In addition to endothelial-specific promoters, her group recently characterized the naïve F8 promoter to drive FVIII expression in the physiological cell types. She demonstrated that the use of endothelial specific promoters induce tolerance by the involvement of T regulatory cells.

She is an expert in several scientific fields including molecular biology, coagulation, and gene therapy. She has generated patient-specific disease-free induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and differentiated them into functional endothelial cells (ECs). Her laboratory is in an excellent position to continue to investigate transgene expression in lentiviral vectors to transduce target cells for genetic diseases and cancer. Moreover, she has ongoing studies regarding the mechanisms leading to tolerance when transgenes are expressed in endothelial cells, with the goal being to develop therapeutic strategies to cure hemophilia A and other diseases.