DNA Replication

Anastasia Sosenko Piscitello is a PhD student in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva. She obtained her bachelor's and master's degree from the Democritus University of Thrace, in Greece. During her research Anastasia is focused on investigation of the mechanisms that underly the process of initiation of DNA replication. More specifically, she aims to explore the characteristics of human replication origins and to better understand the mechanisms by which the cells ensure that they replicate their genomes with high fidelity.

Michalis Petropoulos is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He received his PhD and his master's degree from the University of Patras, Greece, where he studied the regulation of initiation of DNA replication and its link to cancer development. During his PhD, he obtained a full PhD fellowship and worked as a research fellow in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany, with the support of the EMBO short-term fellowship program. Michalis is currently working on understanding the mechanisms by which cells suppress DNA replication stress. Moreover, he is exploring the identification of novel factors which promote DNA replication stress and could serve as potential anticancer therapeutic targets.

Sotirios K. Sotiriou is a Molecular Cancer Biologist, currently working as the Head of Biology at FoRx Therapeutics. His research interests focus on DNA repair, DNA replication and the mechanisms underlying genomic instability in human cancers. Sotirios obtained an integrated master's degree in Biological Applications and Technology from the University of Ioannina in Greece, before joining the University of Geneva in Switzerland to pursue a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology. During that time, he was awarded the Epstein prize from the University of Geneva, the Merck Innovation Cup from Merck KGaA, and the Scholar-in-Training award from the American Association for Cancer Research. In 2018, he received the SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue his postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School and at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In 2019, he founded FoRx Therapeutics together with Prof. Thanos Halazonetis.

Thanos D. Halazonetis is a Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of Geneva and Chief Scientific Officer of FoRx Therapeutics. He studied Dentistry at the University of Athens, Greece, and at Tufts University, Boston, USA. He, then, obtained a PhD degree in Genetics from Harvard University, Boston, USA, where he studied nuclear oncogenes. He started his career at Merck, Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories, West Point, USA, and then returned to academia as an Assistant Professor at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, USA. After being promoted to Full Professor, he joined the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he studies the role of DNA replication stress in cancer.