Stefano Alfano

Stefano Alfano completed his BSc at the Faculty of Biotechnology at the University of Palermo in 2019, where he experimentally studied the effects of Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) as a dietary supplement. At the same time, he conducted experiments on the usefulness of an edible mushroom, “Pletorus eryngii”, as a dietary supplement as well as an adjuvant in cancer therapy and how it affects cancer-associated cachexia in a mouse model, work that is now published.

After his BSc, he moved to the University of Perugia, where he obtained his Master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology with honors in 2022. During a one-year internship, he performed his master’s thesis experiments at the Research Center of Hemato-Oncology (CREO), studying the effect of BCOR loss on B-Cell differentiation. Stefano Alfano then moved to Stockholm to the Karolinska Institutet, first as an Erasmus+ trainee and then as a research assistant. He worked in the group of Dr. Andreas Lennartsson, and his research focused on the epigenetic modifications induced by diabetes in leukemic cells.

Stefano Alfano is an ESR in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Erwin Wagner at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. His main research aims to decipher the causal link between inflammation and metabolism in cancer-associated cachexia, utilizing genetically engineered mouse models and patient-derived material. The ultimate goal is to identify potential biomarkers of the early stages of cachexia and prognostic factors that will benefit the clinical outcome. Additionally, the study of the molecular mechanisms may offer potential therapeutic targets that will benefit cancer prevention and treatment.