Фаббри Мюллер

I received my MD degree in 1997 at the University of Pisa (Italy) and graduated at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. In 2001 I got my residency in Medical Oncology at the University of Ferrara (Italy) and practiced in Italy as a medical oncologist until 2003 when I moved to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA (USA) as a post-doctoral fellow. In 2004 the lab I was working with moved to the Ohio State University and in 2008 I was promoted to Research Specialist with PI status. In 2012 I received my PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biotechnologies at the University "Vanvitelli" of Naples (Italy) and I was appointed as tenure-track Assistant Professor at Children's National Los Angeles (CHLA), in Los Angeles, CA (USA). In 2018 I started working as an Associate Professor at the University of Hawai'i Cancer Center in Honolulu, HI (USA) and in 2019 I was awarded tenure and was appointed as co-leader of the Cancer Biology Program and Scientific Lead, Micro- and Nano-Scale Cancer Therapeutics Initiative. In 2021 I was appointed Associate Director of the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research at Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC (USA) and tenured Associate Professor of Pediatrics at George Washington University in Washington, DC (USA). Since 2022 I am Adjunct Associate Professor of Health Sciences at Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA (USA). In 2023 I was also appointed as tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at George Washington University in Washington, DC (USA). My lab is working on microRNAs and other non-coding RNAs in cancer biology. We are particularly interested in their role in affecting the biology of cancer cells and surrounding cells of the tumor microenvironment and how they affect inter-cellular communication as cargo of extracellular vesicles. My lab was the first to demonstrate that microRNAs are not only gene expression regulators, but can function as ligands of protein receptors (namely Toll-like receptor 8, TLR8) triggering downstream signaling and modulating the anti-cancer immune response. More recently, we have identified a new cytotoxic mechanism of Natural Killer (NK) cells: through the release of cytotoxic microRNAs as cargo of their extracellular vesicles.