The scientific activity of my group is focused on translational, preclinical and clinical studies aimed mainly but not exclusively, at identifying epigenetic markers predictive of outcome and response to therapy to optimize the patients’ management.Most of our work is aimed at the short- and medium-term transfer of our laboratory findings to the clinical practice, and to the development or utilization of advanced diagnostic methodologies not routinely performed by standard Pathology units. Along this line we have identified epigenetic markers to better stratify stage 4 neuroblastoma patients into different risk groups that could benefit from distinct, optimized therapies. Similar studies conducted on glioblastoma, demonstrated that hypermethylation of HOXA 9 and 10 genes identifies a subclass of patients with better outcome. More recently we have discovered markers predictive of aggressive behavior in meningioma.In order to improve the follow up of the patients, my team has developed novel analytical methods based on circulating tumor nucleic acids to construct complex methylation profiles from the DNA extracted from minimal amount of serum and to monitor the reponse to Trastuzumab in HER2+ breast cancer patients.A recently developed research line deals with the development of new therapeutic strategies in glioblastoma based on the epigenetic modulation of pathways known to be involved in the response to treatment. Other ongoing activities are the epigenetic control of miRNA expression in glioblastoma and neuroblastoma and the effect of natural and synthetic molecules acting on DNA methylation and chromatin conformation to potentiate cancer chemotherapy.The technologies commonly utilized in the Laboratory for the epigenetic analysis include qPCR-MSP, Pyrosequencing, COBRA, Chromatin Immunoprecipitation, Methylated DNA Immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) and methylation microarray (Agilent platform).