Paola Alberti

 

Biography

MD, PhD, board in Neurology. She is currently Assistant Professor in Human Anatomy at University of Milano-Bicocca (Monza, Italy) and Consultant Neurologist at Fondazione IRCCS San Gerardo dei Tintori (Monza, Italy). Her expertise is related to peripheral neuropathies, especially Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neurotoxicity (CIPN). She oversees both clinical and preclinical CIPN research projects. At a preclinical level she has developed a line of research that applies morpho-functional techniques to study axonal damage mechanisms, with particular attention to ion channel dysfunctions. To this end she learnt nerve excitability testing from Professor Hugh Bostock, PhD, in London (UCL). At a clinical level she is Principal Investigator of national and international studies aimed at investigating various clinical and epidemiological aspects of CIPN: ICAVS (NCT04633655), CIPN COST (NCT04986891) and NEUPER study (NCT05088681). She was recently funded 450,000 euros to run a 3-year randomized double blind clinical trial repurposing topiramate to prevent oxaliplatin neurotoxicity (TopOx trial).

She was a visiting research fellow at Johns Hopkins University (2015) and the University of Maryland (2018). She is currently a member of the board of the Italian Association of Peripheral Neuropathies (ASNP), secretary of the Traumatic and Toxic Neuropathy Consortium of the Peripheral Nerve Society, and chair of the neurological complication study group of the Multinational Association for Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC).

She is in charge of several human anatomy courses for the international degree in Medicine and Surgery, delivered with innovative tools such as virtual dissections (Anatomage Table^TM) and based on a strongly clinically-oriented method. In June 2026 she was awarded the national scientific qualification for Full Professorship in Human Anatomy (abilitazione nazionale scientifica I fascia).

Contacts

email: paola.alberti@unimib.it   – LinkedIn: Paola Alberti | LinkedIn  –  X: @PaolaAlberti9 – Instagram: paolaalberti85

Main collaborations 

• Johns Hopkins University (Prof. DR Cornblath, MD; Baltimore, US)

• University of Maryland (Prof. S.G. Dorsey, PhD, and Prof. C. Renn, PhD; Baltimore, US)

• University of Padua (Prof. C. Briani, MD; Padua, Italy)

• Saint Andrews State General Hospital of Patras (Andreas Argyriou, MD; Patras, Greece)

• University of Michigan (Ellen Smith, PhD)

• Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge-ICO l’Hospitalet (J. Bruna, MD, PhD; Barcelona, Spain)

• Maastricht University Medical Center (ISJ Merkies, MD, PhD, and CG Faber, MD, PhD; Maastricht, the Netherlands)

• Kathryn W. Davis Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine (Prof. Sandra Rieger, PhD; Bar Harbor, US))

• Georgia Institute of Technology (Nick Housley, PhD, Atlanta, Georgia, US)

Awards and grants

• Awarded Ricerca Finalizzata – Bando Giovani Ricercatori (450,000 euros) grant: Topiramate repurposing to prevent Oxaliplatin-induced peripheral Neurotoxicity.
• Awarded Cariplo foundation grant (250,000 euros): Sodium-calcium exchanger (NCX) and ion channels: pivotal elements leading to axonal damage in peripheral nerves?. A 3-year preclinical project to dissect axonal damage mechanisms. See: ionnerve.com
• Awarded Premio Giovani Talenti 2021(first place, Accademia dei Lincei/University of Milano Bicocca)
• Awarded Bicocca starting grant (December 2020) as PI for the conduction of a 24 months research project focused on socio-economic burden related to (personal grant: 155,000 euros). See: cipncare.com
• Awarded Premio Giovani Talenti 2020 (second place, Accademia dei Lincei/University of Milano Bicocca)
• Awarded AIPN prize 2018for the best oral presentation at the ASNP meeting 2018 (Rome, Italy) for the contribution: “Oxaliplatin Induced Peripheral Neurotoxicity: a rat model that reproduces acute and chronic phenomena”
• Awarded second place at Falling Wall Labs 2017 among all Italian participants with the project “Breaking the wall of Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neurotox” (See here).

 

Publication track record

She authored 106 publications on peer-review international journals. Her current H-index is 39 with more than 4300 citations since 2010 (Scopus, June 2026).

PUBMED BIBLIOGRAPHY – ORCID PROFILE – SCOPUS PROFILE – RESEARCHGATE PROFILE