University

Virginia Brancato is a fixed-term researcher in Biochemistry at Link Campus University. She attained a PhD in Environmental Microbiology and Skin Ecosystem in 2010 from the University of Naples “Luigi Vanvitelli.”

 Returning to Italy, in 2012 she embarked on a postdoctoral project on molecular oncology (NEWTON Project), contributing to the development of innovative three-dimensional models of tumors (breast and pancreas) for drug screening.

In 2017, she moved to Portugal as a researcher at the 3Bs Research Group at the University of Minho, as part of a European H2020 ERA-Chair project. Here, she furthered her research into the creation of 3D in vitro tumor models. The following year, she received three years of funding from the Portuguese government as Principal Investigator to study the interaction between macrophages and the tumor microenvironment.

In 2021, she was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship and returned to Italy to join the Center for Genomic Science at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Milan, where she explored the role of non-coding RNA in the breast cancer microenvironment. During the same period, he received funding from the Roche Foundation for Independent Research to study breast cancer heterogeneity in advanced models, such as patient-derived organoids.

From 2022 to 2025, she was a fixed-term researcher (RTDa) at the Department of Biotechnology and Biosciences at the University of Milano-Bicocca, where she taught laboratory courses in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

During her career, she has supervised doctoral and master's students, contributing to the training of young researchers. She is an active member of several scientific associations, including the Italian Society of Biochemistry (SIB), the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR), AIRIcerca, and the Italian Association of Biotechnologists.

Curriculum Vitae