PhD Stefana Petrescu

Stefana Petrescu is Director of the Institute and Head of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Institute of Biochemistry, Romanian Acdemy. Dr. Petrescu graduated from the Department of Biochemistry, University of Bucharest and obtained a PhD in Biology from the Romanian Academy. She was a DAAD fellow and FEBS fellowship recipient at University of Wurzburg, Germany. She followed postdoctoral studies in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, UK. She obtained three consecutive Wellcome Trust Grants in collaboration with the University of Oxford. She investigated the glycobiology of melanoma- associated antigens, contributing to the fundamental mechanisms of calnexin associated folding and quality control of glycoproteins. She proposed tyrosinase as a model glycoprotein for the investigation of the endoplasmic reticulum quality control and protein degradation in ERAD. Recent research of her lab focusses on the role of ERAD in the antigen processing pathway and discovery of biomarkers and new antigenic peptides in melanoma.