Annarosa Arcangeli

Annarosa Arcangeli is born in 1956 and graduated in Medicine in 1981 at the University of Florence. She has a Specialty in Clinical and Laboratory Haematology and a Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology. Since 2006 she is Scientifi c Director of LIGeMA (a facility of the University of Florence and of Isituto Toscano Tumori for the production of transgenic mice as models for oncological research). Since 2012 she is Full Professor of General Pathology at University of Florence. Co-founder and scientifi c director of the spin-off of the University of Florence Dival-Toscana Srl. Since almost thirty years Prof. Arcangeli is being involved in studies aimed at defi ning the biophysical aspects of intracellular signalling controlling cell growth and differentiation of tumor cells. She contributed to unravel the action mechanism of widely used inducers of tumor cell differentiation, such as the "hybrid polar compounds" (HPC). She also focused on the role of potassium channels, in particular the hERG1 channel, in the govern of the resting potential, cellular ionic homeostasis and cell signalling in normal and cancer cells. In this fi eld, Prof. Arcangeli acquired most of the methodologies required to accomplish the present proposal, in particular gene manipulation, biomolecular techniques and patch clamping. Meanwhile, in the last few years she exploited her skill in mouse transgenesis and in vivo experiments in immunodefi cient mice. These studies led to discovery that, in many human and experimental tumors, the resting potential is controlled by hERG1, an important family of recently discovered potassium channels. Moreover, Prof. Arcangeli integrating biophysical, biomolecular and genetic approaches unravelled the role of potassium channels and their encoding genes, in embryonic development and tumor establishment.