COSTANTINI LARA

Orari di ricevimento

Libero, previo appuntamento tramite e-mail.

Curriculum

In 2011 Lara Costantini has got her master's degree in cellular and molecular biology. In 2015 she has got her PhD in food biotechnology, in the Department for innovation in biological, agri-food and forestry system of Tuscia University, Viterbo, Italy, with a research related to the use of chia seeds as functional foods. Between 2015 and 2021 she owned seven postdoctoral positions at Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences of Tuscia University. Since December 2021 she is a research fellow (RTDa) in biochemistry (SSD BIO/10) at Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences of Tuscia University. She is specialized in the formulation and study of functional foods, mostly based on chia, buckwheat, and hempseeds, and intended for hypertensive, celiacs, and obese people. The activity consisted in the evaluation of the in vitro food functional properties, and then testing its in vivo functionality in animal models (pathological rats). In the last five years she has acquired experience in nutrigenomics and metagenomics. The first by studying the resistance of some solid cancer cell lines at pharmacological concentrations of retinoic acids. Moreover, she acquired experience in using NGS technologies to perform metagenomic analysis of breast tissue microbiota, and to study the connection between it and gut microbiota, and so with nutrition. To date, she has supervised more than 10 MSc and BSc thesis and since 2015 she is effective member of the Commission for the exams of Food Science and Food Safety, Dietetics and Functional Foods, and Biological Chemistry. She is key staff member in the European Project "ERASMUS+ Capacity-building in Higher Education EAC/A05/2017", and she is the winner of the following awards: Marco Rosetto graduation award in 2012, TR35-YI/Young Innovators Under 35 MIT Technology Review in 2013, Gluten-free national quality competition – Gianni Tomassi award in 2014. She is member of the SINU and SISA societies from 2014 and 2018, respectively, and member of the Scientific Committee for the 5th revision of the Reference Intake Levels of Nutrients and Energy (LARN - SINU). From 2018 she is editorial board member for Journal of Clinical Medicine - MDPI, from 2020 Topic Editor for Foods - MDPI, from 2020 Guest Editor for Journal of Clinical Medicine – MDPI for the Special Issue “Nutrition-Microbiota-Cancer Triad: Pros and Cons”, from 2021 Guest Editor for Foods – MDPI for the Special Issue “Prebiotic diet: other dietary molecules implicated in gut microbiota health”, from 2022 Topic Editor for Frontiers in Nutrition for the Research Topic "Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Gut Microbiota", and reviewer for several international journals. Her research fellow project is financed by the “Contributions for the permanence of excellence in the academic world – Regione Lazio PO FSE 2014-2020” for the study of 'waste materials' by the agri-food industries as raw materials in the formulation of potentially functional products.