Seminar of biophysical sciences: Nanomedicine

The course will cover selected topics in the field of Nanomedicine through a series of talks in which course professors and invited speakers will present and discuss recent advancements in the field, with a particular focus on nanoscale processes.

It will include the following series of talks on:

Regenerative Medicine, Mauro Giacca (School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences, King’s College, London)- 10 hours

• Molecular mechanisms of ageing and organ degeneration.
• Stem cells.
• Animal cloning and generation of iPS cells.
• Cell specification and epigenetic reprogramming

Liposome-based techniologies for gene therapy, Giulio Caracciolo (Dipartimento di Chimica, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”) - 10 hours

• Rational Design of Lipid Nanocarriers with Superior Efficiency.
• The Nanoparticle-Protein Corona and its Exploitation for targeted drug delivery
• Converting the Nanoparticle-Protein Corona into high-throughput diagnostic tests for early cancer detection

Proteomics, Liam McDonnel (Fondazione Pisana per la Scienza ONLUS) - 4 hours

Next Generation Sequencing, Stefano Landi (Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Pisa) - 4 hours

Spin-off from basic science to industry, Matteo Agostini (INTA Systems, NEST Pisa) and Marco Battaglini (Siena Imaging, Toscana Life Sciences)- 4 hours

The course will also include a selection of research talks that will be announced during the year. As a proficiency test for the course, first year PhD students should present a seminar on a topic related to those covered in the series of talks, while second year PhD students should present a seminar on a topic related to their own PhD research project.