Patrizia Fanara received her PhD in molecular and cellular neuroscience from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Her PhD thesis work, under the mentorship of Dr. Roland Brandt, was directed toward the understanding of brain microtubule proteins and their modifications in neurological conditions.

After completing her PhD in 1998, she moved to the Department of Biochemistry at Emory University for postdoctoral work in Dr. Anita Corbett’s laboratory, where she developed fluorescence anisotropy assays to measure the interplay of energy and motion in the interactions between components of the nuclear transport machinery and correlate this to transport functions in vivo.

In 2003 Dr. Fanara joined the research team at KineMed, Inc., to apply in vivo stable isotope labeling technology to studying in vivo neuronal cytoskeleton modifications, discovering or evaluating novel therapeutics in ALS, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Dr. Fanara was one of the recipients of the 2007 Prize4life award for best ideas in ALS biomarker discovery.