Elena Cattaneo

Elena Cattaneo, OMRI (born 22 October 1962) is an Italian professor of pharmacology and a co-founding director of the University of Milan's Center for Stem Cell Research. In 2013 she was made an Italian state senator for life. Cattaneo used her position to oppose unfounded claims made by companies offering stem cell remedies.

Biography

Cattaneo was born in Milan. After graduating (summa cum laude) in pharmacy in 1986, she moved to Boston in the United States for a few years, where she specialized at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studied neural stem cell differentiation in the area of the human brain associated with degenerative diseases under Professor Ronald McKay. Another of her mentors was Professor Anders Bjorkeland of the University of Lund. Cattanaeo spent a short time with him in Sweden learning grafting techniques that could be used on stem cells. Returning to Italy she started her academic career in the University of Milan. She lived in Brugherio and worked in Milan.

Elena

Elena may refer to:

People

Places

Fictional characters

Film

Music

Elena (given name)

Elena is a popular female first name in Greek, Slavic, Spanish, Romanian and Italian. It originates in the ancient Greek name Helen/Helene. The variation "Elena" dates back to the 12th century.

Other common variants are Alena (German, Czech, Russian, Belarusian); Alenka (Slovenian); Alyona (Russian); Elene (Georgian); Helen (English); Hélène (French); Helena; Eliana (Portuguese); Ileana (Romanian and Spanish); Ilona (Hungarian, Finnish, and Latvian); Olena (Ukrainian); and Jelena/Yelena (Russian, Serbian).

Notable people

First name

Elena (2011 film)

Elena (Russian: Елена) is a 2011 Russian drama film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize.

Plot

The film depicts the social and cultural distance between the inhabitants of an exclusive apartment in downtown Moscow and a crumbling khrushchevka in Moscow's industrial suburb. Elena is a woman with a proletarian background who connects these disparate worlds. She met Vladimir, an elderly business tycoon, in a hospital when she was his nurse. Their alliance has been described by a critic as "a morganatic marriage nearly a century after the October Revolution".

Elena's son from a previous marriage is poor and wants money from Vladimir to have one of his sons enrolled in a university, keeping him out of the compulsory military service. After Vladimir makes it clear that he is not going to subsidize Elena's relatives, she decides to poison him in order to inherit his fortune. Vladimir plans to leave the apartment to his only daughter from an earlier marriage.