Daniela Merlo

Key facts

• ISS decree 129/2025, signed in Rome on 30 July 2025 by ISS President Rocco Bellantone, ranks Daniela Merlo first and Luca Battistini second in the public selection for Director of the Department of Neuroscience and gives her the post from 1 August 2025 for a renewable three-year term.
• The selection was opened by decree on 7 January 2025, the examining board was named on 24 February 2025, and the ISS board of directors gave a favourable opinion on 23 July 2025.
• Her official ISS CV lists her as Director of the Department of Neuroscience from 1 August 2025, after directing the interdepartmental structure on dementia (prevention, care pathways, research, diagnosis and therapy) from 14 November 2018 to 31 July 2025.
• She has worked at ISS since 3 November 2003, headed its Molecular Neurobiology unit from October 2009 to June 2017 and became a research director in the Department of Neuroscience in December 2022.
• Before ISS she trained at the CNR Institute of Neurobiology in Rome and at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, as a Marie Curie fellow and then staff scientist (1996 to 1999); her PhD in Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine is from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (2003).
• The National CJD Registry sits in the ISS Department of Neuroscience; its staff list revised in November 2024 names Anna Ladogana as responsible for the registry.
• Her indexed papers with an ISS affiliation, about 30 from 2005 to 2026, deal mainly with DNA repair and DNA-PK in neurons, synaptic plasticity, Alzheimer disease models and Niemann-Pick C; only one has CJD in the title.
• That paper is an April 2026 Life (Basel) case report and review, with registry staff and the Carlo Besta laboratory, arguing that peripheral nerve involvement can come with or before brain signs in sporadic CJD; she is seventh of nine authors.
• Her CV lists one earlier prion-related item: a 2005 to 2007 Ministry of Health grant on herpes simplex virus 1 in Alzheimer disease and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, with her as principal investigator of a unit, and a 2012 J Biol Chem paper on beta-amyloid and DNA-PK co-authored with Maurizio Pocchiari.
• Since 2025 she sits on the technical scientific committee of the Italian parliamentary intergroup on neuroscience and Alzheimer disease, and her CV lists ISS replies to parliamentary questions on dementia, dystonia and Niemann-Pick disease.

Timeline

1. 1996Marie Curie fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK, to 1998, then staff scientist to 1999.
2. 2003Joins ISS as first researcher.
3. 2005Ministry of Health grant (2005 to 2007) on herpes simplex virus 1 in Alzheimer disease and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.
4. 2012J Biol Chem paper on beta-amyloid and DNA-PK, co-authored with Maurizio Pocchiari.
5. 2018Becomes director of the ISS interdepartmental structure on dementia, to 2025-07-31.
6. 2022Research director in the ISS Department of Neuroscience.
7. 2025ISS opens the public selection for Director of the Department of Neuroscience.
8. 2025ISS decree 129/2025 names her Director of the Department of Neuroscience.
9. 2025Takes office as department director for a renewable three-year term.
10. 2026CJD case report with registry staff and Carlo Besta published in Life (Basel).