Sara De Palma

Sara De Palma studied at the Polytechnic University of Turin, completing both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in biomedical engineering. During the final year of the master’s program, she moved to Utrecht for an internship at the Laboratory of Neuroimmunology and Developmental Origins of Disease under the supervision of Caroline de Theije. This experience led to pursuing a Marie Curie PhD in regenerative medicine at University Medical Center Utrecht in the group of Cora Nijboer, focusing on optimising mesenchymal stem cell therapy for neonates with hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. In 2023 Sara received a PhD Research Grant from the Cerebral Palsy Alliance which enabled a research stay at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio with Dr Blanco and Dr Mustafa to study the migration of intranasally delivered mesenchymal stem cells to the brain of newborn baboons with hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. The results of this study are presented at this conference.