Dr. Sara Pignatta obtained her BSc and MSc in Medical-Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the University of Ferrara. She continued her academic career by obtaining her PhD in Life and Health Sciences and Biotechnology at the University of Urbino CarloBo. As a researcher, she has acquired extensive experience in drug discovery and contributed to the development of an innovative 3D in vitro system to study radiotherapy and the tumor microenvironment, as well as software tools to analyze 3D tumor models. Since 2011, she has worked at the IRCCS Istituto Romagnolo per lo Studio dei Tumori "Dino Amadori." In 2014, she joined the Molecular Neurotherapy and Imaging Laboratory (MNIL) at Massachusetts General Hospital (Harvard Medical School) as a visiting researcher and investigated the therapeutic effects of human mesenchymal stem cells engineered to express interferons on a variety of patient-derived brain tumor cells in culture, as well as intracranial mouse tumor models derived from patient-derived lines and syngeneic mouse brain tumor lines. In 2021, she joined the Immuno-Gene Therapy Factory (IGTF) at the IRCCS Istituto Romagnolo per lo Studio dei Tumori "Dino Amadori," where she acquired experience in ATMP production processes; this included the clinical CAR-T cell manufacturing process and dendritic cell vaccines loaded with homogenate autologous tumors. Since 2022, she has been a Founding Member of the Italian Society "NOTA-Network Officine Terapie Avanzate."