University

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1917-1750

Cristina Arrigoni is a Tenure-Track Researcher (RTT) in Molecular Biology (GSD BIOS-08/A) at the Link Campus University.

She graduated at the University of Milan with a thesis on ion channel biophysics, focusing her interest on modulation mechanisms in ion channels, either by regulatory domains or by small molecules.

During these years, she had an extensive training in the electrophysiology techniques (patch clamp, two-electrode voltage clamp, planar lipid bilayer) required to characterize ion channel function in the lab of Prof. Anna Moroni, at the University of Milan.

She continued her studies on ion channels structure-function relationship obtaining her PhD in Biomolecular Science in Milan. She moved to UC San Francisco to pursue molecular and structural studies on sodium channels in the lab of Dan Minor. In these years she completed and published relevant studies on temperature modulation in ion channels, a molecular and physiological mechanism involved in nociception. She was trained in X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM to pursue membrane protein three-dimensional structures.

She returned to Italy and set at the University of Pavia sponsored by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Fellowship to study the role of antibodies on ion channels involved in cancer, characterizing a mechanism of channel internalization and turnover through the cryo-EM structure of the Fab-channel complex. Her interest for ion channels involves also pathologies of the central nervous system and her studies on the neuronal KCC2 transporter interactome were funded by Fondazione Cariplo. The current research vision involves the study of macromolecular interactions at the neuronal plasma membrane to develop new therapeutic tools with the aid of machine-learning protein design. The studies require
interdisciplinary approaches: AI-based protein design, structural biology and membrane transport physiology.