Laura Gardano
Associate Professor
Research: Laura Gardano’s research interests delve into the communication of tumor cells with the microenvironment. The main focus of her research is the signaling pathways that are altered not only in cancer cells but also in the surrounding stromal cells that ultimately support cancer development.
Laura holds a PhD in Biochemistry and did a post doc at the Samuel Lunenfeld Institue in Toronto where she studied the role of the Hippo signaling pathway in response to cell adhesion cues using Drosphila as model organism. She later joined the Lea Harrington’s lab in Edinburgh where she studied how genomic instability driven by telomere shortening impacts cell adhesion and beta-catenin signaling. Since she joined the INSERM Unit 1349 in 2012, she has been working on the signaling pathways that contribute to CLL cells retention within the microenvironment. First, she described how the BCR and other microenvironment cues regulate the level of beta-catenin in MCL and CLL cells. In recent years, Laura’s focus moved to the stromal component of the microenvironment. In particular her projects are centered around the stroma metabolic and morphological reprogramming by CLL cells.
Teaching: Laura Gardano is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Life Sciences, where she teaches biochemistry and molecular biology to the three years of undergraduates in Biological sciences (Licence Science de la vie). She is also involved in the Master T2V, as a lecturer in scientific english communication, scientific article analysis and critical thinking. Since 2023 she’s been the pedagogic responsible of the 3rd year undergraduate program (Batchelor level) of Biological sciences. Since 2026 she is co-coordinator of the full 3 years-undergraduate program in Biological sciences, contributing to the organization, quality, and coherence of a study program for bachelor-level students.
Keywords: biochemistry, cell signalling, beta-catenin, stromal cells, CLL, cell adhesion