ESR 11

Libera Valla received her Master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology at San Raffaele University, Milan (Italy) in July 2019. She did her undergraduate internship under the supervision of Prof. Piemonti Lorenzo and Dr. Citro Antonio in DRI (Diabetes Research Institute) at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. After degree she started working as research fellow in DRI. Here she had the possibility to deeply study challenging aspects of endocrine and exocrine pancreatic disease. Her efforts are directed to the characterization of phenotypic and molecular aspects of pancreatic islets of Langerhans, especially about β cell physiology through the study of insulin secretion. She worked with Prof. Piemonti’s group on the discovery of chemokine receptors (especially CXCR1/2) on β cells surface and their association with insulin secretion. Her work dealt with immortalized line cell (ENDOC- βH1) which mimics human β cells and with islet of Langerhans from human donors. Furthermore, she collaborated with other projects using the Biorep Perifusion System, a microfluidic dynamic system which allows cells to be perfused with different stimulus with or without different glucose concentrations and provides insulin secreted by cells during the perifusion. From April 2020 she will start the PhD fellowship, in the framework of DohART-NET project, under the supervision of Professor Eckhard Wolf and Dr. Elisabeth Kemter (MWM Biomodels GmbH in Munich, Germany).

Research Focus: study the impact of maternal diabetes on β cell health in offspring.