Dr. M. Carolina Florian holds a PhD from the University of Milano (Italy). She pursued postdoctoral training at the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Ulm University (Germany) from 2009 to 2015. In 2016, she was awarded an Emmy Noether Grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) dedicated to outstanding early-career researchers. This grant supported the establishment of her independent research team on Epigenetics of Stem Cell Aging. In 2018, she was appointed as group leader at CMRB (Spain).
Her research in the past 5 years strongly challenged the concept that aging is an irreversible process and showed that it is possible to pharmacologically target the aged-dependent alteration of stem cell epigenetic polarity and functionally rejuvenate aged HSCs in vivo. Somatic stem cells are central for tissue homeostasis and regeneration. Their age-dependent functional decline constitutes a hallmark of tissue attrition upon aging, eventually limiting health-span and lifespan. Dr. Florian’s work is committed to further grow the understanding of alterations affecting aged somatic stem cells and she is investigating changes of the epigenetic architecture that drive stem cell aging, to improve tissue attrition with age or even to prevent aging-associated diseases.