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STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION

Valentina Fossati


Senior Research Investigator
New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF)  

Dr. Fossati is a NYSCF Senior Investigator at The NYSCF Research Institute where she focuses on advancing preclinical studies of neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory disorders, utilizing human iPSC-derived brain cell study. Dr. Fossati received her undergraduate degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and her PhD in Stem Cell Biology from University of Bologna. Dr. Fossati did her postdoctoral training, for which she received the NYSCF Druckenmiller fellowship, in the laboratory of Dr. Hans Willem Snoeck at the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at Mount Sinai and she was recruited in 2011 by the NYSCF Research Institute as principal investigator.  Bringing her stem cell expertise, Dr. Fossati has pioneered the development of human stem cell-based models to study the role of glia in neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation.  Dr. Fossati established protocols to generate oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, microglia and neuronal cell types and she is developing organoids and co-culture systems to identify and target the key pathogenic mechanisms leading to neurodegeneration and/or demyelination in progressive multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders of the central nervous system.