Sonia Spinelli is a Scientific Researcher at the IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini in Genova (Italy). She graduated in Molecular and Health Biology, has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and her main areas of study are Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Nephrology. She studies the role of abscisic acid in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes and in the physiology of glycemic homeostasis, the structural and functional characterization of the human abscisic acid receptors LANCL1 and LANCL2 and the metabolic and behavioral phenotype of knock-out mice for the LANCL2 gene. She is also studying the role of sialoproteins in nephrotic syndrome using in vitro models of podocyte cultures in one and three dimensions.