An Italian scientist under 40 with great prospects. It's the professor Luca Tiberi who was recently awarded the prestigious Embo Young Investigators Award, the award that rewards the best European scientists who have not yet turned forty. For five years, no Italian researcher had entered this list that rewards young excellences particularly engaged in the scientific field. What does Professor Tiberi, currently team leader of the Armenise Harvard Laboratory of Brain Disorders and Cancer of the University of Trento and professor at the Cibio Department of the University of Trento do? His research studies organoids, three-dimensional multicellular structures that are able to reproduce human organs and tissues. In simple terms, these are organs produced in vitro that allow the study of many pathologies. And which also allow us to investigate what the organ's response to new drugs may be, with particular attention to their possible side effects.
Luca Tiberi got it important results in particular in the study of brain tumors. Using organoids produced in the laboratory, he discovered a mechanism linked to the origin of medulloblastoma, the most common brain cancer in children but which can also appear in adulthood.
Awarded for his research on organoids linked to brain tumors
The Embo Young Investigators Award, in addition to representing an important recognition of his work, will allow Professor Tiberi and his research team at the University of Trento to enhance studies on organoids. In the near future, these studies could make it possible to produce, in the laboratory, a large number of tumors at reduced costs. Thus carrying out extensive screening to evaluate the use of new therapies.
«This award - explains Luca Tiberi - shows that even in Italy, with adequate funding, high-level objectives can be achieved. Unfortunately, most of the funding we have received comes from donations from individuals: Armenise Harvard Foundation, AIRC and CARITRO. To strengthen the competitiveness of our basic research at European levels, we must also think about public funding commensurate with the importance of the role of research. For example, with more structured and regular tenders, the elimination of VAT,… we need to give a new impulse to patronage, integrating the public contribution with private capital incentivized by facilitated taxation ».
Luca tiberi he returned to Italy after a long experience abroad
Professor Luca Tiberi is one of those fleeing brains who returned to Italy a few years ago thanks to the funding obtained with the results of his research activity. Many important stages in the curriculum of this young scientist from Trentino. Degree in Medical Biotechnology at the University of Bologna, PhD in Molecular Oncology atUniversity of Trieste and then abroad. Eight years at the Pierre Vanderhaeghen laboratory in Brussels where he specialized precisely on the technology underlying the development of cerebral organoids. These are special "test-tube brains" that allow us to study the mechanisms that cause brain cancer.
After winning the Career Development Award (CDA) of the Armenise Harvard Foundation in 2016, which funds basic research in the biomedical field at Harvard Medical School in Boston and in Italy, Luca Tiberi returned to Italy. Here he established the Armenise Harvard Laboratory of Brain Disorders and Cancer at the Cibio Department of the University of Trento. In 2018 another recognition by the Airc and in 2019 by CARITRO for the creation of new brain and lung organoids.
Since 2016, no Italian had entered the prestigious list of the best scientists under 40. Embo, which awarded the prize, is an organization that involves more than 1800 researchers committed to promoting excellence operating in the scientific sector. This award is also an indirect recognition of the work of the Armenise Harvard Foundation. The Foundation, through the Career Development Award (CDA) program, attracts young scientists to Italy. The aim is to set up new biomedical research groups in various Italian centers of excellence. Professor Luca Tiberi is the third Board of Directors - out of 28 overall winners - winner of the EMBO Young Investigators Award.
(ph credit Alessio Coser)
