From the Departmental Faculties of Medicine and Engineering the leading experiences in the fields of Process Engineering, Oncology and Biochemistry
17 May 2017 - A funding of almost 2 million euro with an internal tender of 500 euros, plus 1 million euros for the purchase of core facilities in the field of medical genetics and 425 thousand euros earmarked for internationalisation. These are the numbers that speak of the investment ofUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma in scientific research. To explain them is the Director General of the University, Paolo Sormani, on Research Day 2017. An event dedicated to the major themes of innovation and technology and which was also an opportunity, as per tradition, to take stock of the state of the art of research in the University.
University research in three projects
To corroborate last year's balance, the scientific results of which are summarized in theResearch Yearbook 2016 presented by Pro-Rector for Research Prof. Eugenio Guglielmelli, was the story of the research experiences of the two Departmental Faculties of Medicine and Engineering.
Specifically, we started from Process Engineering with Marcello De Falco, teacher of Dynamics and control of chemical processes, and protagonist of two works whose fundamental objective, typical of Chemical Engineering for Sustainable Development, is the improvement of industrial production with a reduction of the negative impact on the planet (watch the video). The first project concerns an innovative process capable of transforming carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, into Dimethyl Ether, a fuel that can be added to diesel for motor vehicles. The second project instead consists in the construction of a storage device applicable to air conditioning systems to allow energy savings of 20-30%. A job that was also worth the teacher UCBM the "first paper" award at the ICMSET 2016 - International Conference on Material Science and Engineering Technology, held in Phuket, Thailand, from 14 to 16 October last year.
Scientific publications in leading journals
From engineering we then moved on to strictly medical topics with the Medical Oncology Research Unit (watch the video), directed by prof. Giuseppe Tonini. At the speakers' table, the teacher. Daniele Santini, Professor of Oncology, reported on studies related to pain in bone tumors. Evidence that has allowed clinical practice to be directed directly towards the administration of stronger opioids in smaller doses, skipping the second phase of the therapeutic process in which lighter drugs were administered but in larger quantities. The team's translational research is also based on bone metastases, aimed at studying the microenvironment - the so-called 'niche' - in which bone cancer cells proliferate, as well as the interaction between the different types of cells residing in the bone. There are numerous works carried out on different types of tumors and which have led to seven publications in scientific journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine e oncotarget.
Finally, the teacher. Mauro Maccarrone, Full Professor of Biochemistry, illustrated the results of a study carried out with the Harvard Medical School and the Santa Lucia Iccrs Foundation. A work published on Science Translational Medicine concerning resolvins (watch the video), those molecules that regulate the final phase of an acute inflammatory process, repairing damaged tissues and thus restoring the body's good health. The hypothesis - confirmed by analyzes on laboratory models - was to verify the possible efficacy of resolvins also in correcting those defective immune processes which lead to a chronic inflammatory state and even to self-aggression of one's own tissues, as in the case of chronic inflammatory or autoimmune diseases. Now, in fact, the experimentation is continuing on blood samples from patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, with the aim of moving on to tests on three human subjects and arriving at the development of a new therapeutic protocol in three years.
