Francesco Verona, Ph.D.

Dr. Francesco Verona joined the Cellular and Molecular Oncology Laboratory headed by Prof.
Giorgio Stassi during his master’s degree in 2017, where he developed approaches to study both,
in vitro and in vivo, the molecular mechanisms driving tumor progression in neuroblastoma and
colon cancer. In 2019, he received his master’s degree cum laude in Medical Biotechnology and
Molecular Medicine at the University of Palermo with a thesis entitled “Neuroblastoma and
microenvironment: Identification and characterization of tumor-derived mesenchymal stem
cells”. In 2024, he gained a PhD in Molecular and Clinical Medicine from the University of
Palermo with a thesis entitled “The role of driver mutations in the initiation and progression of
thyroid cancer” focused on the identification of the thyroid progenitor cells as the cell of origin
of follicular cell-derived thyroid cancers. In June 2024, he started working as a Postdoctoral
Fellow in the Cellular and Molecular Oncology Laboratory.