Dr. Stefano Cairo is a molecular biologist with a PhD in Human Genetics and a HDR (habilitation à diriger la recherche). He has been working on basic and translational cancer research for more than 20 years and has a strong background in functional genomics, experimental biology and biomarker discovery.
Since his arrival In Marie-Annick Buendia’s lab at Institut Pasteur in Paris in 2004, he has been working on hepatoblastoma, the most frequent pediatric liver tumor. During this time, he could identify Myc as a key molecular driver of hepatoblastoma and a prognostic molecular signature that identifies aggressive forms of this disease. Soon after his arrival at XenTech , a contract research organization in preclinical oncology, in 2009, where he is currently employed as Head of Research and Development, he launched the pediatric liver cancer preclinical platform program, aimed to generate new experimental models for these malignancies to serve the needs from academia and industry to validate/consolidate their results before trying to move them into the clinic. So far, this platform counts more than 40 in vivo and 12 invitro models. These models are being shared with academic collaborators all over the world and are being used by pharmaceutical companies to test anticancer agents.
Stefano has been collaborating with Dr. Keller for many years, has been supported by Macy Easom and Addie’s Hepatoblastoma Research, and led to the publication of several peer-reviewed research articles. He decided to join cc-TDI as adjunct faculty in 2020 to support cc-TDI’s research by sharing his expertise in translational research and setting up novel collaborative projects between XenTech and cc-TDI.
