University of Salford/ Keele University
Dr Di Leva joined the Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine at Keele University as a Senior Lecturer in April 2019.
He studied Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” working on noncoding RNA and its multiple functions and extraordinary plasticity. He graduated cum laude in 2004 and with the support of the Italia-USA Program Fellowship, Gianpiero moved as a predoctoral student first to the Kimmel Cancer Centre in Philadelphia and then to Ohio State University where he completed in 2009 his PhD, based both at University of Ferrara and Ohio State University. During this time, he acquired an interest in the role of small non-coding RNAs and their involvement in cancer by showing how they re-programme gene expression to confer proliferative advantage to cancer cells and induce resistance to therapeutic agents.
In 2014, he decided to move with his family to Manchester where he joined the Cancer Research UK-Manchester Institute and had the opportunity to work in drug discovery for the development of new drugs targeting cancer stem cells.
In December 2015, he became lecturer in biomedical sciences and started his first independent laboratory at Salford University. In 2019, his laboratory relocated to Keele University with the aim to identify vulnerabilities in cancer cells and define innovative way to target them
“A cancer diagnosis is upsetting for any patient any time but especially when that patient is a child. I believe that any family that has been affected by paediatric cancer, when that news comes to them, they have a lot of question; they want to know what is this cancer? What are the causes of the cancer? What are the therapies available for the child? A lot of these question today have an answer and the medical team is providing full support to the families but unfortunately some of these questions are not available yet.
And as a scientist I believe that understanding the basic biology of cancer and trying to dissect all these molecular pathways that drive the new plastic phenotype that move cancer cells to disseminate is essential for the identification of vulnerabilities of cancer cells that, in the future, we may use to target and kill the cancer cells and improve the outcome of patients.
The goal of my research is to add any little pieces that we can to the big puzzle of the cancer biology any single of these pathways anything molecular interaction molecular pathway that we may identify is essential in order to develop a new theories, new therapeutic approaches. And that’s the only way we have to move forward in and fight cancer for once and for all.”
Dr Di Leva research focuses on his long-standing interest in exploring the molecular roles of non-coding RNAs in determining cell fate changes and gene regulation.
0161 295 3864 