After completing her master’s degree in Medical Biotechnologies at the University of Siena in 2020, Francesca performed a post-graduate Erasmus for traineeship in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine, and Health, University of Manchester. During her experience she studied tumor-associated macrophages, oncogenic signalling pathway and tumor microenvironment.

In 2023, she completed her PhD in Genetic, Oncology and Clinical Medicine at the University of Siena defending a thesis entitled “the role of myeloid CSF-1 receptor (CSF-1R) in mesothelioma cell proliferation”. During her PhD she spent nine months as visitor student at the Sbarro Health Research Organization Center, Temple University, Philadelphia (USA). During that period, her research was focused on the study of cell cycle regulators in cancer cells.

In 2024, she started post-doctoral research activity in the team of Massimo Locati at Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan, working in a project studying the function of the tetraspanins MS4A proteins in the biology of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs).