Ilaria Panzeri, PhD

Research summary

My research program investigates how epigenetic regulation shapes cancer susceptibility, tumour development, and treatment response. A central question is how the dosage of epigenetic regulators - and their insufficiency in particular - establishes distinct developmental, epigenetic, and metabolic states that determine whether and how tumours arise, progress, and respond to therapy. I am especially interested in how early-life, nongenetic factors set these states well before disease appears.

Working across pediatric and adult tumours, and combining epigenetics, developmental biology, metabolism, and multi-omics in mouse models and iPSC-derived organoids, my lab aims to define the mechanisms that link epigenetic dosage to cancer risk, therapy resistance, and clinical outcomes, with the long-term goal of improving early diagnosis and treatment stratification.

Research themes

• Cancer biology
• Genetics and epigenetics in health and rare disease
• Genome sciences and computational biology
• Stem cells and development

Keywords

• Cancer susceptibility
• Developmental origins of cancer
• Epigenetics
• Epigenetic dosage
• iPSC-derived organoids
• Metabolism, Therapy resistance
• Mouse models
• Multi-omics

Dr. Panzeri joined the University of Manitoba as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics, within the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, in May 2026.

She earned a bachelor's degree in biotechnology and a master's degree in molecular biology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, in Italy, where her interest in epigenetics took shape during a master's project on methyltransferases and epigenetic patterns in invertebrates.

She went on to a PhD in Translational and Molecular Medicine at Milano-Bicocca and the National Institute of Molecular Genetics, working with Prof. Massimiliano Pagani on epigenetic gene regulation in human T lymphocytes. Her doctoral research examined the role of long noncoding RNAs in T cell differentiation and the transcriptional landscape of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes.

She subsequently broadened her work towards metabolism and cancer as a Human Frontier Science Program postdoctoral fellow with Prof. J. Andrew Pospisilik, first at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany, and then at the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, USA, where she continued as a research scientist with Prof. Pospisilik and, later, Prof. Russell Jones. 

Her work during this period established that early-life epigenetic states can shape lifelong cancer susceptibility, and extended into how diet and metabolism influence tumour development.

Education

PhD in Translational and Molecular Medicine, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy (2014)

MSc in Molecular Biology (cum laude), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy, (2011)

BSc in Biotechnology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy, (2007)

Awards

Research Excellence Award, Department of Epigenetics, Van Andel Institute (2025)

Human Frontier Science Program Long-Term Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018–2021)

Best Poster Award, From Genomes to Functions SIBBM Seminar, Cariplo Foundation (2015)

Graduate School National Fellowship (2011–declined)