Giovanna Zinzalla

In January 2012, she took up a position at the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) and started her own research group as an assistant professor in chemical biology and principal investigator at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, and within the Centre for Advanced Cancer Therapies (ACT). In the summer of 2024, she joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences at the Uppsala Biomedical Centre, Uppsala University (Sweden). Since 2019, Dr Giovanna Zinzalla has been a long-term visiting researcher (affiliated principal investigator) at the Department of Pharmacology, where she also lectures for the third-year (Part II) Pharmacology course for the Natural Sciences BA degree. She is also Fellow of Pharmacology at Lucy Cavendish College.

How the transcriptional machinery orchestrates gene expression programs during development, renewal and in response to environmental signals is one of the outstanding questions in biology. I tackle this fundamental problem by focusing on determining at the molecular level the mechanisms regulating the interactions between transcription factors and their interactions with co-factors, especially with epigenetic regulators. My research approaches encompass the use of chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology. The ultimate goal is to develop therapeutic agents to treat human diseases and new approaches for regenerative medicine.