Federica Ungaro

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT FEDERICA UNGARO

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) with a major aim: to find new pathogenic mechanisms and therapeutic avenues for the treatment of these complex disorders. I devoted my attention to the Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid (PUFA)-mediated resolution of inflammation in ulcerative colitis (UC). I achieved important results by taking advantage of lipidomics as a high-throughput approach to analyze the broad spectrum of pro-resolving lipids in the intestine, and I demonstrated the MFSD2A protein as being involved in the metabolism of PUFAs to enhance the production of pro-resolving metabolites and oversee the resolution of inflammation in colitis. Being endothelial cells exerting a pivotal role during IBD pathogenesis, I finalized other works elucidating their functions in regulating inflammatory milieu. My commitment to the field of IBD was further consolidated by my participation as the main author of review articles addressing the state-of-the-art in the field of IBD and also CRC-associated inflammation. In recent years, I have been investigating the role of the eukaryotic virome in contributing to intestinal inflammation. Specifically, my group and I proposed Hepadnaviridae and Hepeviridae as possible triggering viral factors for UC and Crohn’s disease (CD) aetiogenesis, respectively. Currently, we are investigating the roles and functions of a specific viral protein in contributing to immune dysregulation in intestinal mucosa and its impact on UC pathogenesis (Gut, paper under revision). Another recent achievement, that posed the first milestone of my scientific independence, was the publication of the IBD TaMMA framework (https://ibd-meta-analysis.herokuapp.com/), which provides the scientific community with a user-friendly, open-source platform for the standardized analysis of transcriptome and metatranscriptome data from patients with IBD. IBD TaMMA will effectively allow us to get substantially closer to a more holistic picture of patient-specific disease mechanisms based on data collected and generated across various research centers. It will offer an unprecedented opportunity to define new hypotheses and insights for a better understanding of the pathogenesis of IBD and to develop personalized treatments. These achievements allowed me to be appointed as the Research Group Leader of the Experimental Gastroenterology Unit at San Raffaele Research Institute, with the promise to further contribute to the better knowledge of the pathogenesis of IBD and possible therapeutic interventions that may ameliorate the overall patients’ quality of life.