Our team

Graziella is a Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and Cell Therapy Program Coordinator at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine “Stefano Ferrari”. She is also co-founder and R&D Director at Holostem Terapie Avanzate S.r.l.

Prof. Pellegrini is known for her work in translational medicine, and has developed epithelial stem cell-mediated cell and gene therapies. She has used epithelial stem cells for the treatment of severe eye and skin disease, establishing the first successful clinical trial to treat junctional epidermolysis bullosa and developed a culture system that creates limbal stem cells for the regeneration of corneas, able to restore vision to patients with ocular burns. This system, Holoclar®, was recognized by the European Medicines Agency in 2008, and is the first stem cell based medicinal product to be approved by the European Commission. Between 2018 and 2020, Prof. Pellegrini shared the ISSCR and Louis-Jeantet Prize, with Michele De Luca, as well as winning the TERMIS and European Tech Women Award amongst others, for the development of epithelial stem cell-based regenerative therapy in patients with severe eye and skin disease.

Prof. Pellegrini has published over 100-peer reviewed papers and book chapters, 9 patents, and is a founding member of the International Ocular Surface Society. She is also a member, speaker, or chair of numerous scientific societies, international committees and meetings covering stem cells and regenerative medicine.

Giulio is a Professor of Regenerative Medicine at The University of Manchester and visiting professor at the Max Delbruck Centre, Charitè in Berlin. He is a fellow of the Medical Academy, of the Accademia dei Lincei, and the European Academy of Science. He has been Panel Chair at the European Research Council (ERC) and a member of the Committee for Advanced Therapies (CAT) at the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Giulio is Senior Editor of EMBO Molecular Medicine and is in the advisory board of several institutions across Europe. He is recognized for his pioneering work on skeletal myogenesis, the identification and characterization of mesoangioblasts, and the first cell therapy trial to utilize stem cells for muscular dystrophy.

Prof. Cossu is author of 250 peer-reviewed publications, has secured research grants for over €20 million, including two ERC Advanced Grants and coordination of three European Commission projects. He has also trained more than 50 post-doc and PhD students, many of them now professors in different European Universities.

Christine is Professor of Developmental Biology in the department of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology at Leiden University Medical Center. In 2011, she founded the first iPSC core facility in the Netherlands. In 2015, she also became guest professor at the Technical University of Twente to develop organ-on-chip models based on stem cells, is founding chair of the European Organ-on-Chip Society and heads a multimillion-euro research program focussed on implementing these models in human stem cell research. She is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, past board member of the Netherlands Medical Research Council and holds European Research Council (Advanced Proof-of-Concept) Grants to study cardiac development and disease in humans based on stem cell models. Dr. Mummery is a former Editor-in-Chief of Stem Cell Reports, the journal of the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), for which she became president in 2020.

Julian is a biotech entrepreneur and world expert in bioinformatics. He graduated his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge and was a research fellow at Stanford University. He is now a Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Bristol. He has successfully started a number of biotech companies.

Owen is world expert in the application of machine learning and complex systems in cell reprogramming. He was a career development fellow at the Medical Research Council, UK and was the recipient of a Japan Society for Promotion of Science fellowship to work at the RIKEN Omics Science Centre in Yokohama. He is now an Assistant Professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.

Jose has worked at the cutting-edge of cell reprogramming for over a decade. He graduated his PhD at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York before becoming a research fellow at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He was awarded a NHMRC career development fellowship, a Charles Viertel Senior Medical Research fellowship as well as an ARC future fellowship and is now a Professor at Monash University.