Barbara Testoni obtained her PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Milan. Then, she moved to the University of Rome “La Sapienza” for her post-doctoral training. She is a Team Leader of the “HBV persistence & new antiviral therapies” group at INSERM U1052, The Lyon Hepatology Institute EVEREST. Her research interests mainly include the investigation of the epigenetic mechanisms at the basis of host and viral gene regulation during HBV infection, with particular focus on the transcriptional regulation of the HBV minichromosome. She is also involved in translational studies, with the aim of understanding the relationships between HBV persistence and intrahepatic innate immunity perturbations and characterizing new serum biomarkers for intrahepatic cDNA activity.