Biologia sintetica in biomedicina: comprendere la complessità cellulare per progettare terapie con cellule T migliorate
Velia Siciliano, PhD in Genetica Umana, esperta di biologia sintetica in Biomedicina, alle ore 12.00 terrà un seminario dal titolo "Synthetic Biology in biomedicine: understanding the cellular complexity towards the design of improved T cell therapies".
La dottoressa Siciliano è Principal Investigator Tenured presso l'Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, IIT, Genova, e membro della Global Young Academy of Science. Ha ricevuto una serie di premi e riconoscimenti per la sua attività di ricercatrice.
Ospita la professoressa Caterina Missero
Abstract
Synthetic biology is a bioengineering discipline that aims at reprogramming cell fate by designing genetic circuits that sense and respond to disease biomarkers in the intracellular or extracellular environment. These smart interfaces process endogenous information and implement robust responses enabling high specificity and self-containment of desired output activation. Sensing cellular state may be particularly relevant when engineering T cell-based therapies for the treatment of solid tumors, to enhance the long-term efficacy of CAR-T cells. Over the talk I will discuss our current efforts for the design of genetic devices that can sense T cell state, focusing on strategies to enhance T cell persistence. Further, I will present our recent research on the impact of exogenous genetic payloads on mammalian cells and its implications for genetic circuits’ design.
About Velia
Velia graduated in Medical Biotechnology at Uni Federico II and obtained a PhD in Human Genetics and Bioengineering at the Telethon Institute for Genetics and Medicine (Naples, ITA). She then moved to MIT as postdoc and then to Imperial College London as Junior PI. She is now Principal Investigator Tenured at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia-IIT where she leads the Synthetic and Systems biology lab for Biomedicine. Over the past few years, she received awards including the MIT Young Innovator under 35, the Rotary International award, Inspiring 50 Women in Science &100 STEM experts (Fondazione Bracco, Startup Italia), 10 representative women of 2019 (La Repubblica). She is also member of the Global Young Academy of Science. Velia got the ERC Starting Grant in 2020. She is also involved in collaborative European projects at the forefront of designing novel technological platforms for healthcare and cell-based therapies. Her research is at the interface of building foundational technologies for rational design, robust performances of synthetic circuits, and translational applications of synthetic biology in biomedicine.
* PER PARTECIPARE online:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85344158653?pwd=NjdlcWNCMkhINTN1b1BXWE1peXFndz09
Meeting ID: 853 4415 8653
Passcode: 598661