Dr. Giulia Furesi joins the Department of Medicine in the Division of Oncology as an Instructor as of August 2026.
Dr. Giulia Furesi completed her PhD in Cancer and Bone Biology at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, where she investigated how solid tumors alter the bone microenvironment and demonstrated that tumor-derived factors reprogram skeletal sites to establish a pre-metastatic niche.
In 2021, she joined Dr. Roberta Faccio’s laboratory at WashU Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow, supported by the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her postdoctoral research has focused on how bone-resident stromal populations contribute to cancer progression and therapeutic response. Her work led to the discovery that osteolineage-derived stromal cells can be reprogrammed into cancer-associated fibroblasts that support tumor growth, remodel the extracellular matrix, and influence responses to immunotherapy. She has also contributed to studies examining how bone-derived factors regulate hematopoietic progenitor cell output and tumor-associated myelopoiesis, providing new insights into the interactions between stromal cells, immune regulation, and cancer progression. Her research has resulted in multiple publications and has been recognized through several awards, including the John G. Haddad Young Investigator Award and career development funding.
Dr. Furesi is now extending her expertise in cancer biology, stromal regulation, and hematopoiesis to hematologic malignancies, with a particular focus on acute myeloid leukemia and cellular immunotherapies. Her research seeks to identify and validate novel therapeutic targets for engineered T-cell therapies while also investigating how the bone marrow microenvironment influences disease progression and treatment response. Her long-term goal is to build an independent and collaborative research program that bridges basic science and translational medicine to develop new therapeutic opportunities for patients with leukemia and other blood cancers.