Serena Vegna

I performed my PhD in Dr. Ula Hibner’s laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Genetics, Montpellier (France) working on the interplay between hepatitis C virus (HCV) replication and the host innate immunity, in link with liver carcinogenesis. After my PhD, I performed a short post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Prof. Fabien Zoulim at the Cancer Research Centre of Lyon (France) working on the impact of hepatitis B virus on liver physiopathology and on the hepatic microenvironment.

I joined Dr. Leila Akkari’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow in September 2017, where my work focused on understanding the dynamic regulation of the tumor microenvironment during Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) progression and in response to therapy.

Since 2021, I am continuing my interest on HCC and the hepatic tumor microenvironment as an associate researcher studying the reciprocal communication between senescent cells and the immune system, with the overarching goal of exploiting this crosstalk to design novel combinatorial therapies for the treatment of liver cancer.