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Antonia Follenzi, MD, PhD

Full Professor
University of Piemonte Orientale, Department of Health Sciences
Novara, Piemonte, Italy

Antonia Follenzi is a full professor of Histology and Cell and Gene Therapy at the School of Medicine of the University of Piemonte Orientale in Novara, Italy. She graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Torino, Italy in 1992 and received the PhD in Human Oncology in 2001.
During PhD studies, working with Prof. L. Naldini, developed novel lentiviral vectors (LV) for in vivo LV delivery. She exploited LV injection in mice for targeted expression in the hepatocytes, being able to reduce immune responses after LV delivery. Always focused on liver cells, in collaboration with Prof. S. Gupta at Einstein College of Medicine in New York, demonstrated that liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSEC) can repopulate the liver, secrete coagulation FVIII and correct the bleeding phenotype in hemophilic mice. Returning to Italy she implemented the technology of generating iPSCs from healthy and hemophilic hematopoietic cells (in particular from CD34+) and differentiating them to endothelial cells that after LV genetic correction using endothelium-specific promoters were able to secrete FVIII and once transplanted able to correct the bleeding phenotype in hemophilic mice. One of her current research focuses on optimizing gene transfer for hemophilia A by modulating FVIII expression using novel promoters to restrict FVIII expression in endothelial cells that contribute to the immune tolerance of Factor VIII. Moreover, our recent results suggested a possible endothelial dysfunction in hemophilic ECs both at the in vitro and in vivo level, leading us to consider that studying the differences in the genetic profile between healthy and hemophilic ECs could help us to understand the extra-coagulative roles of FVIII beyond hemostasis.

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