Current Position

Dr Kleanthous is director of thalassaemia courses organized by the Italian European Genetics Foundation, organizes hybrid courses and e-learning transmissions to the CING, has been involved in the organization of more than 10 workshops and seminars, nationally and internationally, and is organizer of the annual Cyprus Thalassaemia Conference.

Professor, CING Postgraduate School

Course Coordinator of MM101: Molecular Basis of Monogenic Diseases, Cyprus School of Molecular Medicine

Education

Dr Kleanthous has published over 25 refereed papers, has contributed to chapters for 3 books and has given more than 30 lectures at conferences in Cyprus and abroad. Over the last decade, Dr. Kleanthous has been involved in more than 14 projects (totaling over €18.5 million in grant money) and has been the coordinator of over 10 of those projects.

Research Interests

• Drug therapy for thalassaemia using HbF inducers
• Gene therapy for thalassaemia
• Development of a diagnostic chip for thalassaemia
• Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) for thalassaemia
• Studies on the molecular basis of different forms of thalassaemia in Cyprus and other neighbouring countries
• Genotype/phenotype correlation studies in thalassaemia.

Biography

Dr Marina Kleanthous was born in Limassol in 1958 and was raised in Cyprus. She received her BSc in Biology at the University of Thessaloniki in 1981. For her work at the Demokritos Hellenic Centre of Physical Sciences from 1981 to 1985 she received a PhD in Neurochemistry from the University of Athens. From 1985 to 1986 she then worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Research Center of Crete, and from 1987 to 1991 as a researcher at the Fishery Department of the National Center for Marine Research in Greece.  She started at the Department of Molecular Genetics of Thalassaemia at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics (CING) in 1991 and has been Head of Department since 1997.  She has extensive experience in the diagnosis of different forms of thalassaemia, haemoglobinopathies and other rare hereditary disorders, in the prenatal diagnosis for thalassaemia and for other diseases, and in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for thalassaemia.