The most Coronavirus-savvy Italian student has just graduated from UCBM
June 16, 2020 - Domenico Benvenuto, the student who analyzed the first genomic sequences of the Coronavirus, has just graduated fromUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma. It is a record-breaking thesis on "molecular medicine during a pandemic" that makes the new graduate the most expert Italian student on Covid-19. In fact, during his studies he broke every record, putting his signature on 12 scientific publications on the virus, signing 6 of them as principal researcher.
Benvenuto, originally from Campania from Montecorvino Rovella (Salerno), together with his research team, coordinated by prof. Massimo Ciccozzi Head of the Medical Statistics and Molecular Epidemiology Research Unit UCBM, they discovered how the virus had started from the Chinese Wet Markets of Wuhan to arrive silently in Italy. From the leap of species that brought the virus from the bat to man up to global contagion, from structural mutations to the many others that explain its nature, Domenico, through an analysis of molecular epidemiology, has quantified and reconstructed the impact of the mutations of the Sars-Cov-2 virus to get to know the history and characteristics of the virus that has upset the life of the whole world. "In January the world was not yet alarmed by the pandemic but our working group was already trying to understand what was happening in China and in other areas of the Far East - explains Dominic - Over the weeks, thanks to phylodynamic and phylogeographic analyses, we have traced the paths and history of transmission of COVID-19 from China to other countries in the world".
Domenico is a great lover of computers and new technologies, he knows several languages and during the months of the lockdown he did not interrupt his research even though he had to stay at home like everyone else. His has been a deep journey into the nature of the virus, in understanding the mechanisms of contagion of the virus that has spread in the various Italian regions and which reveals the wonders of molecular or precision medicine. A modern mix of transversal knowledge between molecular biology, statistics, genetics, biochemistry and pathology that uses the analysis of big data, managing to study in detail the molecular aspects of diseases, their mutations, anomalies and always allowing diagnosis and therapy more personalized.
"The bioinformatics approach in precision medicine has been crucial in combating this new pathogen – concludes Dominic – it allowed us to identify the transmission routes, potential treatments and possible vaccines. Similar analyzes will be essential in the future for the surveillance of pathogens to avoid the recurrence of a new epidemic or, possibly, to better address it ".
The winners in this story are not only medicine and Domenico, who now aims to specialize to become an expert in molecular epidemiology, but the entire Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma which sees the investment in merit made in a student rewarded. And it is precisely on merit, as the University Minister Gaetano Manfredi recalled in recent days, that theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma which until June 20th makes scholarships available to the most deserving students for specialist degrees which will allow the first in the ranking to access a path of excellence with full coverage of the fees for the two-year period and additional training and research spaces in the laboratories of the university alongside doctoral students.
