Ilaria Cosentini
Tutor: Salvatore ALAIMO
After completing her Master’s degree in Biomolecular Chemistry, she began an interdisciplinary PhD program in the Department of Physics at the University of Catania, within the course “Complex Systems for Physical, Social-Economical and Life Sciences.” She carried out her research activities in the Bioinformatics Unit of the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, specializing in integrated analysis of omics data, the use of programming languages, and computational methodologies for studying complex biological systems. In parallel, she developed experimental skills by applying advanced laboratory techniques.
During her PhD, she undertook two research periods abroad in international, multidisciplinary environments: from October 2021 to May 2022 at the Wexner Medical Center of The Ohio State University (Columbus, USA), and from September 2022 to December 2022 at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Dresden, Germany). These experiences allowed her to collaborate with groups of biologists, bioinformaticians, and data scientists, expanding her methodological and scientific expertise.
After obtaining the title of International Doctor (March 2023), she became a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation (IRIB) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). She works in the field of environmental epidemiology and maternal–child health, with a particular focus on the effects of exposure to environmental factors during pregnancy on neonatal outcomes and child development. She integrates advanced statistical approaches, causal inference models, and machine learning techniques with environmental and multi-omics data in a meet-in-the-middle framework, applying multi-pollutant models, dimensionality reduction methods, and cluster analysis to identify biological mediators and health trajectories.
Multi-omics approach for the personalized medicine purpose
Russo, C.; Patanè, M.; Vicario, N.; Di Bella,V.; Cosentini, I.; Barresi, V.; Gulino, R; Pellitteri, R.; Russo, A.; Stanzani, S. Olfactory Ensheathing Cells express both Ghrelin and Ghrelin Receptor in vitro: a new hypothesis in favor of a neurotrophic effect. Neuropeptides, 2020, 79, 101997. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.npep.2019.101997
Castorina, S.; Barresi, V.; Luca, T.; Privitera, G.; De Geronimo, V.; Lezoche, G.; Cosentini, I.; Di Vincenzo, A; Barbatelli, G.; Giordano, A.; Taus, M.; Nicolai, A.; Condorelli, D. F. & Cinti, S. Gastric ghrelin cells in obese patients are hyperactive. Int J Obes 45, 184–194 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-020-00711-3
Barresi, V.; Cosentini, I.; Scuderi, C.; Napoli, S.; Di Bella, V.; Spampinato, G.; Condorelli, D.F. Fusion Transcripts of Adjacent Genes: New Insights into the World of Human Complex Transcripts in Cancer. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20, 5252. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20215252
Jacob T. Schwartz International School for Scientific Research - Lipari School on Computational Life Sciences: Artificial Intelligence in Biomedicine. Lipari Island, July 24th - July 30th, 2022
Cosentini, I., Barresi, V., Condorelli, D.F., Ferro, A., Pulvirenti, A., Alaimo, S. (2023). COMBO: A Computational Framework to Analyze RNA-seq and Methylation Data Through Heterogeneous Multi-layer Networks. In: Cherifi, H., Mantegna, R.N., Rocha, L.M., Cherifi, C., Miccichè, S. (eds) Complex Networks and Their Applications XI. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2016 2022. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1077. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21127-0_21
Cosentini I, Condorelli DF, Locicero G, Ferro A, Pulvirenti A, Barresi V, Alaimo S. Measuring cancer driving force of chromosomal aberrations through multi-layer Boolean implication networks. PLoS One. 2024 Apr 9;19(4):e0301591. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301591. PMID: 38593144; PMCID: PMC11003681.
Chavdoula E, Anastas V, La Ferlita A, Aldana J, Carota G, Spampinato M, Soysal B, Cosentini I, Parashar S, Sircar A, Nigita G, Sehgal L, Freitas MA, Tsichlis PN. Transcriptional regulation of amino acid metabolism by KDM2B, in the context of ncPRC1.1 and in concert with MYC and ATF4. Metabolism. 2024 Jan;150:155719. doi: 10.1016/j.metabol.2023.155719. Epub 2023 Nov 6. PMID: 37935302.
Anastas V, Chavdoula E, La Ferlita A, Soysal B, Cosentini I, Nigita G, Kearse MG, Tsichlis PN. KDM2B is required for ribosome biogenesis and its depletion unequally affects mRNA translation. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2024 Jun 6:2024.05.22.595403. doi: 10.1101/2024.05.22.595403. PMID: 38826406; PMCID: PMC11142201.
Mills J, Tessari A, Anastas V, Kumar DS, Rad NS, Lamba S, Cosentini I, Reers A, Zhu Z, Miles WO, Coppola V, Cocucci E, Magliery TJ, Shive H, Davies AE, Rizzotto L, Croce CM, Palmieri D. Nucleolin acute degradation reveals novel functions in cell cycle progression and division in TNBC. J Exp Clin Cancer Res. 2025 Jul 14;44(1):204. doi: 10.1186/s13046-025-03401-y. PMID: 40653460; PMCID: PMC12257848.