After completing his Ph.D. and post doctoral training, Dr. Davide Zella joined the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Subsequently he joined the Institute of Human Virology and the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Dr. Davide Zella has more than 25 years of experience in the field of microbiology/virology, immunology, cancer biology and molecular biology. He has more than 50 publications, including peer reviewed articles and books chapters. Early in his career Dr. Zella studied the interactions between IFN-alpha and the immuno-system, in particular the anti-proliferative ability of IFN-alpha, the regulation of chemokine receptors by Interferons, and mechanisms of intracellular replication of HIV.

More recently, the focus of Dr. Zella’s research has been the study of the interaction between components of the microbiota and human cells to unveil molecular mechanisms of cellular transformation caused by bacteria. In fact, beside the well-established association between H. Pilory and gastric cancer, many reports highlight the correlation between several components of the microbiota and cancer, and for this reason our group is interested in studying the link between cancerogenesis and bacteria, with particular attention to Mycoplasma.