Muller Fabbri's Biography

Muller Fabbri, Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

Muller Fabbri is currently Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Microbiology & Immunology at the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases and Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA. He received his M.D. degree in 1997 from the University of Pisa, Italy. He trained at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA first and then at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA where he started his research on the role of microRNAs and other non-coding RNAs in cancer. In particular, he was the first to identify a family of miRNAs (the miR-29 family) able to affect DNA methyltransferases and induce re-expression of epigenetically silenced tumor suppressor genes. In 2009 he was awarded a Sidney Kimmel Foundation Fellowship. He has recently identified a completely new mechanism of action of miRNAs: as ligands and agonists of Toll-like receptors, and modulators of tumor growth and dissemination through this aberrant cross-talk between cancer and immune cells within the tumor microenvironment.