Annalisa Savardi

Dr. Annalisa Savardi is a board member and Team Leader Neuropharmacology at IAMA Therapeutics. She oversees early-stage discovery up to advanced preclinical studies to identify new drug candidates to be progressed into clinical research. Annalisa has a strong background in neurobiology, pharmacology, drug discovery applied to neuroscience. Before joining IAMA Therapeutics, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), awarded by a postdoctoral fellowship from Jerome Lejeune Foundation as principal investigator in a project on NKCC1 inhibition in Down syndrome and co-morbidities. In addition, as a postdoctoral researcher at Telethon Foundation, she performed and oversaw preclinical studies on NKCC1 inhibitors identified during her Ph.D. fellowship. In particular, she was responsible for the in vitro and in vivo testing of hundreds of new molecular entities to deliver lead, and backup compounds effective in ameliorating brain-related symptoms in diverse neurological conditions characterized by NKCC1/KCC2 alteration.

During her Ph.D. fellowship, she discovered and characterized a new class of selective NKCC1 inhibitors to treat autism and Down syndrome, and she is co-inventor of the related patent application. Annalisa is co-author of different scientific articles and book chapters.

Annalisa holds a M.S. in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Milan, an M.S. in Neurobiology from the University of Pavia, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Neurotechnology from the University of Genoa-IIT.