Elisabetta Dejana

As regards teaching, Dejana has given courses in vascular biology at several European Universities. In 1998, she became Associate Professor of General Pathology at the University of Insubria in Varese, Italy. Since 2002, she has held the position of full professor at the University of Milan. She has also been appointed full professor at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University, Sweden.

While continuing to study vascular cell biology, Dejana also began to investigate angiogenesis, the process by which new blood vessels form in an embryo as well as during the growth of a tumour. Blocking blood vessel formation in a cancer may provide a means to stop the cancer's growth. The idea is that, if starved, the tumour will shrink and become more susceptible to treatment. She researched this topic from 1993 to 1996 as director of the hematology laboratory of the Centre d'Études Nucléaires in Grenoble, France, while also teaching in Paris. Returning to Italy, she participated in a project of the Italian Foundation for Cancer Research (FIRC) to create a new institute dedicated to cancer research and, when the Molecular Oncology Institute (IFOM) was established in Milan, she was among the first scientists to set up her laboratory there. She directed the establishment of an IFOM research programme to study angiogenesis and develop therapeutic strategies to inhibit tumour growth and has been the chief of that programme since 2000.

Between 1977 and 1979, Dejana was a postdoctoral fellow at the Dept. of Pathology, McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. From 1979 to 1983 she was a researcher at the cardiovascular pharmacology laboratory of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan. In 1983 she became chief of the vascular physiopathology unit of the same institute, leaving in 1988 to be a visiting scientist at the Department of Pathology of Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. In 1989, she was a visiting scientist, at the Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. Returning to Milan, she set up the vascular biology laboratory, which she headed until 1993.

Elisabetta Dejana (born 1951) is an Italian cell biologist and an expert on regulation of vascular system development. She has published widely and is frequently cited for her work. She has received several important awards. Dejana is a full professor at the University of Milan and has also been appointed full professor at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Elisabetta Dejana was born on 21 November 1951 in Bologna, Italy. She obtained a doctorate (summa cum laude) from the University of Bologna in biological sciences.