Born in Bologna on March 22, 1951
1974 Degree in Biological Sciences
1974-1978 Fellowship in the Institute of General
Pathology – University of Bologna
1974-1982 Main interest has been the study in vivo and in
vitro of RNA synthesis in normal and regenerating rat liver to
investigate the relationship between function and fine organization
of chromatin.
1982-1984 Visiting professor in the laboratory of
Prof. M.L. Pardue at MIT (Boston) working on the Drosophila
telomeric sequences. A specific repeated sequence,
hybridizing to giant chromosomes, had been cloned, mapped and used
to screen a Drosophila library.
1984-now Associated Professor at the Department of
General Pathology University of Bologna. In these years main
interest has been the molecular characterization of neuroblastoma.
We studied the correlation among N-myc amplification , 1p deletion
and prognosis. The studies on cytogenetics alteration of 1p in
neuroblastomna, allowed the identification of a specific allelotype
in D1S94 associated with the disease. N-myc
amplification had evaluated on 295 patients and the
alteration was associated with a worst prognosis in all the disease
stadies but IVs. We analyzed the proliferation rate of
neuroblastoma cells through the evaluation of AgNOR protein area in
the nucleolus, both in cell lines in culture and in tumor samples
and we demonstrated that duplication time and N-myc amplification
are indipendent parameters. Both are associated with the disease
outcome.
12/2001-2/2002 I have been appointed as Visiting Academic
Worker in the Prof. S. Lakani at the Institute of Cancer Research
in London.
Prof. Annalisa Pession is co-author of about 130 full papers
published in international journals included in the "Journal
Citation Reports", of some book chapters and of many communications
presented in International Meetings.
Since 2001 I have been working for the Anatomic Pathology Unit at
the Department of Oncological Sciences in the Bellaria Hospital.