Dr Denise Drago is a senior researcher at ProMeFa (Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility) in the Center of Omics Sciences at IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele.

She got her PhD in Tissue and Grafting Engineering at the University of Padua (Italy) in 2009. She had the privilege, as a postdoc, to attend Prof Frank LaFerla’s lab at the University of Irvine (California, USA), where she kept in contact with an exciting and scientific outstanding group. She focused her studies on the role of TNF-alpha and its receptors in the adult neurogenesis in the triple transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) after multiple learning experience and cognition. She also worked on the beneficial effects of neural stem cell transplantation on AD-related neuropathology and cognitive dysfunction.

In 2011, Dr Drago joined the lab of Dr Stefano Pluchino, as a senior postdoc, at IRCCS-Ospedale San Raffaele. Her research focused on exploring the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating the therapeutic plasticity of neural stem/precursor cells (NPCs) in central nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis. She devoted special attention to the study of the NPCs cross talk with the immune system through the cell-to-cell transfer of soluble metabolites and extracellular membrane vesicles by using proteomic and metabolomic approaches by using liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). She acquired great experience in mass spectrometry during her postdoctoral training at IRCCS-Ospedale San Raffaele as well as for a fruitful collaboration with Dr Christian Frezza at MRC Research Centre in Cambridge by using a combination of untargeted metabolomics and 13C metabolic flux analysis. In 2014, she joined, as a researcher, the Protein Microsequencing Facility (ProMiFa), guided by Dr Annapaola Andolfo. Her current research interest is to develop proteomic and metabolomic methods applied to different research projects in collaboration with many physicians and scientists from IRCCS-Ospedale San Raffaele as well as from other national and international research institutions.