Research Activity

Summary of research activities (2013 - present)

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: BIOS-11/A - PHARMACOLOGY

Description of Research Activity and Interests

My research activity within our lab team is dedicated to the design and execution of preclinical pharmacology studies in murine and cellular models of degenerative neuromuscular disorders, both inherited (e.g., Duchenne muscular dystrophy) and acquired (e.g., inflammatory myositis, disuse atrophy, aging-associated sarcopenia), for which there is currently no definitive cure.

The main goals are:

The main goals of our research team activity are:

to provide new mechanistic insights of disease via the characterization of experimental models, for the identification of novel therapeutic targets;
to evaluate the potential efficacy and safety of drugs – either new or repurposed – acting on key disease pathways, as well as of nutraceuticals and dietary supplements as possible adjuvants of pharmacological therapy.

These objectives are pursued via a rigorous multidisciplinary experimental approach, based on the assessment of both primary and secondary clinically-relevant outcomes, in line with international guidelines and Standard Operating Procedures (i.e. TREAT – NMD neuromuscular network SOPs), with a specific expertise on in vivo/ex vivo skeletal muscle function and electrophysiology readouts The same approach is also used for the characterization and validation of novel/emerging animal models of pathology 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; Orazio Nicolotti, Section of Molecular and Data Modeling), national and international academic groups (e.g. Alessandra Ferlini, Università degli Studi di Ferrara; Emilio Clementi, Università degli Studi di Milano; Annemieke Aartsma-Rus and Maaike van Putten, 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 - The Netherlands, Charley’s Fund, Duchenne UK, AFM-Téléthon).