DrAlessia Caramello

My scientific interests span from neurodegenerative diseases to embryonic brain development.

I obtained my undergrad and master degree in Biotechnology and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Turin in Italy. There, I worked on a mouse model of microcephaly caused by defective division of neuronal progenitors (Bianchi et al., 2017) and later on the neuronal stem cell potential of parenchymal astrocytes in a mouse model of Huntington’s Disease (Nato et al., 2015).

In 2013 I moved to London and worked as a research assistant in Christiana Ruhrberg group at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology on GnRH neurons development (Cariboni et al., 2015). My long lasting collaboration with Prof. Anna Cariboni on Plexins and SEMA3 expression in GnRH neurons continues to this day (Oleari et al., 2019; Paganoni et al., 2022). In 2015 I started my PhD with Robin Lovell-Badge at the Francis Crick Institute investigating the role of SOX9 in gliogenic potential acquisition of neuronal progenitors during brain development. My work mostly focused on the development of the dentate gyrus: I showed that granule neurons migration relies on the formation of an astrocytic scaffold regulated by SOX9 (Caramello et al., 2021), and found that one potential downstream target of SOX9 for this is HOPX (Caramello et al., 2022). During my PhD I also worked as a teaching assistant at UCL and organised developmental biology conferences as a committee member of the Young Embryologist Network.

In 2021 I started a cross-centre post-doc with Paul Matthews in ICL and John Hardy in UCL at the UK Dementia Research Institute. Here I developed a panel of 30 antibodies for Imaging Mass Cytometry to study selective neuronal vulnerability in Alzheimer’s Disease in humans. I found that the first neurons to be lost in the early disease also accumulate amyloids intracellularly (Caramello et al., 2023 medRxiv). In 2024 I was awarded an Alzheimer's Society Career Development Grant to explore the connection between intracellular amyloids and defective autophagy. In Imperial I am an active member of the departmental ECRs committee which organises the "Future Leader" monthly seminar series and workshops for ECRs.

Outside of the lab, I enjoy cycling, climbing and gardening.