Prof Melissa Formosa obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Malta (UM) in 2014, and holds a full-time resident academic position at the Department of Applied Biomedical Science within the Faculty of Health Sciences, UM. She is also an associate member at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking at the UM.

She leads the ‘Malta Osteoporotic Fracture Study’ consisting of more than 1000 Maltese individuals affected with osteoporosis including postmenopausal women and extended families affected with osteoporosis. The collection forms part of an international multi-study consortium known as GENOMOS investigating the genetics of osteoporosis and other musculoskeletal traits.

Her work on osteoporosis has been presented at several international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals. She is currently using the zebrafish model to investigate the role of novel genetic factors in the susceptibility of familial osteoporosis with the aim of identifying possible bone targets for customised treatment.

Past & Ongoing research projects:
Malta Osteoporotic Fracture Study (Principal Investigator, PI)
GeOM Study: Unravelling the Genetic determinants of Familial Osteoporosis in Malta (PI)
GEMSTONE Cost Action: Genomics of MusculoSkeletal traits Translational Network (Working
Group 3 Leader) - https://cost-gemstone.eu
MetaBone: Metabolomics to identify novel biomarkers for Bone disease (PI)
TargetID: Drug Targets for Infectious Diseases (Working Group Leader)
ZeEBRA Project: https://www.um.edu.mt/r/projects/zeebra/ (PI)
GRIT Study: The Genetics of Osteoporosis in Malta (PI)
DETERMINE: DEcoding The gEnetic Risk eleMents of osteoporosIs aNd diabEtes (PI)
STRONG: Natural productS To TaRget bONe and muscle Growth (PI)