Dr. Cristina Richichi graduated in Biological Science at the University of Milan in 2000, and obtained her PhD in Neuropharmacology in 2003 working in the Laboratory of Experimental Neurology at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan. During these years, she was mainly involved in the study of the functional role of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines in seizures and brain inflammation, and the dissection of the mechanisms underlying the epileptogenesis process.

From 2003 to 2008, she was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Laboratory of Anatomy & Neurobiology at the University of California at Irvine, working on the mechanisms of action of hyperpolarization activated cyclic-nucleotide gated (HCN) channels in developing neuronal networks using organotypic hippocampal slice culture. Back in Italy in the 2009, until 2023 she was senior researcher in the Department of Experimental Oncology at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) and she was involved in several project aiming at the identification of markers and mechanisms supporting the tumorigenic potential of cancer stem cells derived from glioblastoma. Moreover, she was focused on the knowledge of the biology of specific molecular alterations in the brain metastases and on the understanding the mechanisms of organ-specific metastatic program. During these years she was awarded with the Fondazione Umberto Veronesi Post-Doctoral Fellowship for 5 years.

At the beginning of 2024, she joined the Leukocyte biology Lab led by Prof Massimo Locati at Humanitas Research Hospital as a type B fixed-term researcher of the Department of Medical Biotechnologies and Translational Medicine of University of Milan. She is currently working on a project aimed at investigating the role of macrophage populations expressing the tetraspanins MS4A4A and MS4A4D in tumor growth establishing in vivo model of high grade glioma, and in metastasis processes.