Roberto Papait is an Associate Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Cytology at the University of Insubria.

Dr. Papait graduated cum laude in Biology at the University of Milan in 1998 and completed his PhD in Evolutionary and Development Biology at the University of Insubria in 2004. His research focuses primarily on the role of epigenetics in cellular differentiation and the maintenance of cardiac homeostasis. During his doctoral studies, Dr. Papait investigated the cellular mechanisms by which the Np95 protein regulates the cell cycle, highlighting its essential role in myoblast proliferation.

As a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Insubria, he continued his research on Np95, demonstrating its involvement in histone ubiquitination and the replication of heterochromatic regions. From 2006 to 2008, Dr. Papait was a researcher at Dialectica, a spin-off of the University of Milan, where he contributed to the development of a neuronal stem cell model for drug screening and investigated the mechanisms of action of the anti-cancer drugs Temozolomide and Carmustine, revealing their effects on heterochromatin regions. Thereafter, as a fixed-term contract researcher of the Institute of Genetic and Biomedical Research of the National Research Council (CNR), he started to carry out his research activity at Humanitas Research Hospital, where he dedicated himself to the study of the role of epigenetics in regulating the differentiation of cardiomyocytes and the activity of cardiac cells in the adult heart under normal conditions and after stress.

Currently, at Humanitas he is studying the roles of histone modification and long non-coding RNA in the impairment of cardiac function associated with ageing, one of the main risk factors for heart failure in the elderly.