Professor Arca has received his degree in Medicine in 1985 and the post-graduate certification in Liver and Metabolic Diseases in 1988, both at Sapienza University of Rome. From 1989-1993 he was holding a postdoctoral position at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Department of Medicine. At first (1989-1991), he conducted his postdoctoral work at the Nutrition Center, under the mentorship of Prof. Scott M. Grundy, dedicating himself to the investigation of in vivo lipoprotein metabolism in vivo; then, from 1991-1993, he moved at the Department of Molecular Genetics (heads: Nobel Laureates Joseph L. Goldstein and Michael S. Brown) where he worked, under the supervision of Prof. Helen Hobbs, to studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms of lipid disorders.
After his return in Italy, he was appointed as Assistant Professor and Staff Member of the Lipid Center of the Sapienza University of Rome and, in 2001, he became Associate Professor of Internal Medicine. In 2001, he received a visiting professorship at the UT Southwestern at Dallas for completing a project dedicated to a new lipid disorder. Since 2008 he is the Head of the Lipid and Atherosclerosis Unit of the University Hospital Policlinico Umberto I, in Rome.
Prof. Arca’s main research interest focus is on the biochemical and genetic causes of atherosclerosis, the cellular metabolism of lipoproteins, the lipid lowering drugs and clinical trials with anti-atherosclerotic drugs. His main achievements were the unravelling of mechanisms of hypercholesterolemia in postmenopausal women and the characterization of genetic and biochemical bases of a new hyperlipemic syndrome called autosomal recessive hypercholesterolemia. In addition to several awards and honours, he has published as author or coauthor of more than 200 publications in these areas in major international peer-reviewed journals (including Science). He is member of the European Atherosclerosis Society, fellow of the International Atherosclerosis Society and Professional Member of the AHA. Actively involved in Italy, he served as President of the Lazio Chapter of the Italian Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis (SISA) and since 2010; he is serving as National Secretary of SISA.
He is Associate Editor for Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Disease (NMCD) and Atherosclerosis