Ilaria Malanchi obtained her Master degree at the University of Siena after two years spent at the research centre of Chiron Vaccine, (later Novartis Vaccine and now GSK, Siena, Italy). She obtained her PhD from Heidelberg University (Germany) and spent one year at the IARC (WHO, Lyon, France).
Her long-standing interest deciphering cancer complexity began in 2004 when she moved to start her postdoc in the newly opened Huelsken lab at the ISREC, Lausanne, Switzerland, (part of the Federal Swiss University (EPFL)). During these Postdoc years she began to investigate the importance of tumour microenvironment during metastatic progression.
Building on this expertise in mouse tumour models, Ilaria set up her laboratory at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in 2011 (now part of the Francis Crick Institute) and was awarded tenure and promoted to Principal Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in 2018.
Ilaria and her collaborators are focused on understanding of how cancer cells communicate with the tissue environment to gain their tumorigenic power. A major interest of her laboratory is to elucidate both local and systemic interactions between cancer and the host during tumorigenesis and metastatic progression.