Dr. Elena Mariotto obtained the bachelor’s degree in biology in 2010 at the University of Padova and then she participated to a European Double-Degree Program between the University of Padova and the Paris Diderot University where she obtained a Master’s Degree in both Health Biology (Padova) and Genetics (France) in 2013. In 2017 she obtained the PhD in Pediatric Oncohematology at the University of Padova under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Basso, a pioneer of pediatric leukemia treatment. Since her PhD, her research interests have focused on a comprehensive understanding of key molecular pathways that sustain tumor drug resistance and the identification of promising anticancer drugs for pediatric cancers. Indeed, she has been awarded with research grants from the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC, Italy), the RALLY Foundation (US), STARS@UNIPD (University of Padova, Italy) to setup an in vitro model of Medulloblastoma resistant cells as a powerful tool to identify more effective treatment options for relapsed patients.
Dr. Elena Mariotto is currently a Principal Investigator of the intramural STARS@UNIPD starting grant that she obtained in 2021 to recreate a more representative environment for patient-derived pediatric brain tumor (PD-BT) to bring to light unexplored potential metabolic synthetic lethal drugs. She is also the responsible of the High-Throughput Drug Screening (HTS) platform at the Istituto di Ricerca Pediatrica – Fondazione Città della Speranza (IRP, Padova, Italy) to accelerate the identification and validation of new treatment options for pediatric cancers.