…TIMESLOT: Thursday 4 September 2025 16:00 CEST
…MAIN TITLE: Acute Onset in Infantile Mitochondrial Disorders
…PRESENTERS: Dr. Caterina Garone (Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy)
Caterina Garone is Associated Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Bologna and Child Neurology consultant at the Child Neurology Unit of IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna. From 2010 to 2014, she conducted laboratory research at Columbia University in New York, working with pioneers in mitochondrial medicine and metabolic myopathies such as Prof. Salvatore Dimauro and Prof. Michio Hirano. During her years in the US, she contributed to the development of nucleoside therapy for thymidine kinase 2 deficiency myopathy in in vivo models and to the launch of a clinical trial for the human use of the same therapy. She also published numerous scientific papers on new genes and disease mechanisms for muscular and mitochondrial diseases. During the same period, she also obtained a PhD in Human Genetics. In 2014, she moved to the Cambridge Mitochondrial Biology Unit in Cambridge (UK) and won the European Commission’s first Marie Curie Reintegration Grant for a project dedicated to the study of the disease mechanisms of mitochondrial DNA replication defect syndromes. In 2019, thanks to the Rita Levi Montalcini – Rientro Cervelli Award, she returned to Italy where she established her laboratory research group dedicated to rare genetic diseases with a particular interest in mitochondrial diseases and metabolic myopathies. She is currently Associate Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Bologna, carries out clinical work at the Policlinico S. Orsola hospital and continues her research into the development of disease models for the validation of the efficacy and safety of drug and gene therapies.