Chiara Balestrieri is the Coordinator of the Computational Cancer Immunotherapy Lab at the Center for Omics Sciences Research and a senior tenure-track researcher in the Experimental Hematology Unit at IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele in Milan.

She earned her PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Milano-Bicocca, followed by postdoctoral research at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) and Humanitas University in the lab of Gioacchino Natoli. During this time, her work centered on the epigenomic and transcriptomic regulatory mechanisms driving Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Her work contributed to several high-impact publications, such as Balestrieri C. et al., "Co-optation of Tandem DNA Repeats for the Maintenance of Mesenchymal Identity", published in Cell (2018). 

In 2020, Chiara joined Chiara Bonini’s lab in the Experimental Hematology Unit as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research primarly focused on characterizing liver metastases from colorectal adenocarcinoma (CRC), with particular emphasis on the anti-tumor immune response, leveraging multi-omics approaches (Potenza A., Balestrieri C. et al., Revealing and harnessing CD39 for the treatment of colorectal cancer and liver metastases by engineered T cells, Gut 2023).

Motivated by a strong commitment to translational medicine, Chiara actively collaborates with multidisciplinary teams both within the institute and internationally. Her work supports the discovery of tumor-specific alterations through the application of cutting-edge high-resolution omics technologies.

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