Dr. Beatrice Gini is a cancer biologist and translational researcher whose work focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying therapeutic response and resistance in cancer. Her research integrates functional genomics, single-cell technologies, lineage tracing, pharmacodynamic assays, and clinically relevant preclinical models to identify therapeutic vulnerabilities and advance precision oncology.
Over the past 15 years, Dr. Gini has conducted research at the University of Verona, UCLA, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at UC San Diego, and UCSF. She has contributed to studies published in Science, Nature Genetics, Cancer Cell, Clinical Cancer Research, PNAS, Molecular Cell, and Nature Reviews Cancer, advancing knowledge of tumor evolution, genomic instability, and targeted therapy resistance in glioblastoma and EGFR-mutant lung cancer.
As first author, Dr. Gini recently demonstrated that CDK4 or CDK6 upregulation promotes DNA replication stress and genomic instability, driving resistance to EGFR-targeted therapy in lung cancer. This work provides a mechanistic rationale for biomarker-guided combination treatment with EGFR and CDK4/6 inhibitors.
In her current role in the UCSF Department of Dermatology, Dr. Gini develops integrated pharmacodynamic assays to evaluate targeted therapies in uveal melanoma. By combining IP-One HTRF, pERK HTRF, Western blotting, CellTiter-Glo, and complementary molecular analyses, she investigates drug activity, signaling responses, and pharmacodynamic biomarkers to support preclinical therapeutic development.
Dr. Gini is committed to collaborative and translational cancer research and enjoys mentoring students and early-career scientists in experimental design, cancer biology, and functional genomics.