Pietro Giorgio Spezia

Pietro Giorgio Spezia is a PhD student in Clinical and Translational Sciences at the University of Pisa. His research activity is based at the Retrovirus Center and the Virology Laboratory of the University Hospital of Pisa , where he has investigated the viral infections by Torque Teno Virus and its use as a predictive marker of immune system function in the transplanted patient. He is currently working on the role and composition of Torque Teno Virus variants in viral infections by developing next-generation sequencing and Real-time PCR-based methods. He is also involved in the development of bioinformatics systems for next-generation sequencing analysis in viral infections, especially in the classification of human Anelloviruses. His main interest is the natural history and pathogenesis of anellovirus infection and the development of methods for the diagnosis of anelloviruses. Other areas of research include emerging and re-emerging respiratory viruses (Redondovirus, SARS-CoV-2). He is a member of several scientific societies such as the Italian Society of Microbiology, the Italian Society of Virology and he is a referee for several international scientific journals and currently guest-editor of Viruses journal (MDPI). Currently included in a challenge convened by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) to establish new classification criteria for the taxonomy of anelloviruses.