Antonio Palma

My research focus has been in the field of cancer biology with a particular interest in transcriptional mechanisms, cell signaling, and cell competition. My prior training includes a Bachelor's in Medical Laboratory Sciences (2015), a Master's in Oncobiology (2019), and a PhD in Biotechnology and Biosciences (2023). Since 2016, my main goal is to study cancer biology from a translational perspective, which aims to bring basic science research findings from the bench to clinics. This can be achieved by using human patient samples to describe cancer models, which can later be used to discover new early detection and prognosis biomarkers and to find new therapeutic targets that will improve cancer treatment. In 2019, I joined Dr Madan and Dr Gogna's team and collaborated on the publications at multiple high-impact journals such as Nature, PNAS, NAR, Cancer Research, EMBO Mol Med, and EMBO Journal. Among them, I highlight the discovery of fitness fingerprints and cell competition mechanisms in the promotion of tumor growth, published in Nature (2019), which regulatory mechanisms were further elucidated during my PhD training. My scientific contributions are not limited to cancer biology. Together with Dr Madan, I published a study that discovered Flower Lose as a prognostic marker for COVID-19 outcomes. Additionally, I have a publication on embryonic development that applies artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to describe how cell-cell interactions affect the transcriptome in a cell-type-specific manner. In the future, I intend to continue studying cell competition and cellular microenvironments in different diseases, thus finding potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets that will improve patients' health and secure continuous publications in high-impact journals.