Dr Cristina Sobacchi graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technologies at the University of Milan in 1998, with a Training in Molecular Biology. She is CNR Senior Researcher since 2022.

Her research deals with the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in bone pathophysiology, which are investigated by in vitro (2D and 3D) and in vivo preclinical models and studies in patient cohorts. She contributed to identifying several genes responsible for human osteopetrosis, and for this has been involved in the definition and periodical review of the Consensus Guidelines for diagnosis, therapy and follow-up of Osteopetrosis, on behalf of the ESID and the European Bone Marrow Transplantation-Inborn Error Working Party (EBMT-IEWP). She has also carried out preclinical studies aimed at the development of new therapies for osteopetrosis, by using pharmacological, cell-based and gene therapy approaches. Specifically, she has a longstanding interest in the investigation of bone pathophysiological mechanisms and therapies related to the RANKL cytokine. Additional recent topics of her research are the role of oxidative stress in diverse bone pathophysiological conditions, particularly focusing on the DPP3/Keap1/Nrf2 antioxidant pathway and related molecular and cellular events; bone matrix composition and properties in preclinical models of disease; and the mechanisms underlying bone infection.

She is Member of the European Calcified Tissue Society (ECTS), where she has been actively serving in different Committees, Member of the Forum in Bone and Mineral Research and of the International Scientific Society of Ectopic Calcification (ISSEC). She received the ECTS Young Investigator Award in 2007 and the ECTS/ABBH Ian Boyle Award in 2009. She has been invited speaker to several National and International Scientific Meetings in the field. She is coauthor of 92 papers in peer-reviewed journals in which she features mainly as first or last author (h index: 30; Source: Scopus), and 3 Book Chapters.