Marco Feligioni, PhD

Dr. Feligioni research has been always dedicated to the study of neurotransmitter release mechanisms and more recently the role of protein posttranslational modification in protein aggregation, both in physiological and pathological conditions. During his PhD, at the University of Genoa, he was dedicated in understanding the presynaptic role of somatostatin receptors in the induction of neurotransmitters release. Moreover, he spent part of the PhD working, at the University of Bristol (UK), on presynaptic AMPA, Kaiate and NMDA receptor trafficking during different stimuli. He also came across protein SUMOylation and it role on presynapses and he discovered that this protein posttranslational modification controls presynaptic release of glutamate. After this observation several other papers demonstrated that SUMOylation modifies the activity of presynaptic proteins like Syntaxin1a, Synapsin and other SNARE complex proteins. Dr. Feligioni continued the study of glutamate release mechanism and the role of protein SUMOylation in neurodegenerative diseases with his laboratory at EBRI. He is still interested in investigating the role of SUMO in the AD and Tauopathies synaptic failure, the role of SUMO in ALS but also in Parkinson’s disease. Moreover, he is interested in elucidate the role of NMDA receptors in the brain and in the retina during glaucoma. Recently, he published few papers on retinal studies regarding oxidative stress and glutamate release.