Fran Gullo

Francesca Gullo serves as Gift of Life Marrow Registry’s Scientific Director. She has a broad background in regenerative medicine, with specific trainings and expertise in the clinical application of Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) for articular cartilage regeneration and Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs) for blood cancer treatment. Her research includes the identification of a mesenchymal stem cell subset with enhanced chondrogenic ability (F. Gullo et al., Rheumatology; 2013) and the development of a computational model that supports the research in the hematopoietic stem cell field (F. Gullo et al., Bioinformatics; 2015). Francesca earned her Ph.D. in Regenerative Medicine from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and her Master of Science in Molecular Biology and Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Catania, Italy. The aim of her PhD project was the identification of biomarker sets for consistent enrichment/purification of functionally distinct Mesenchymal Stem Cell subsets from the human synovium. As a postdoctoral scientist at UCLA, Francesca became very familiar with Osteoarthritis. At the University of Oxford, she was involved in the discovery of small molecules that play a key role in the expansion of umbilical cord blood-derived Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs). At InVitroCellResearch, she worked with Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, whereas at TransfusionHealth and RocketPharma she investigated the clinical applications of HSCs from peripheral blood. Prior to joining Gift of Life, she wrote National Institutes of Health grants for clinical trials with MSCs and managed R&D with MSCs and HSCs. Throughout her career, she has become very familiar with the cell and gene therapy field which is her great passion.