Ricerc@Sapienza

The scientific activity of Dr. Leopizzi  has been focused on bone disease, in particular on the study of the onset and progression of Osteosarcoma analyzing different  processes in human osteosarcoma tissues and cell lines (primary and immortalized). In this contest, she studied different proteins – Ezrin, Rho and Ras GTPase - aiming in understanding the new targets and molecules involved in the pathogenesis of osteosarcoma.

She is also studying the relationships between Phosphoinositide-specific Phospholipase C (PI-PLC) enzymes in osteosarcoma to elucidate the role of the signalling pathways in pathologic processes including cancer cell migration, invasion, and metastasis.  Furthermore she characterized the expression and subcellular localization of Phosphoinositide-specific Phospholipase C enzymes in differently polarized macrophages, in osteoblast cells, in fibroblast cells and in other bone cancer as Ewing Sarcoma and Synovial Sarcoma.

Recently, she started to study osteosarcoma-derived extracellular vesicles and demonstrated that PI-PLC isoforms localize into cell membrane extracellular vesicles about to be released, as conveyed and/or membrane protein.