brain – Progress in Research

Politecnico di Milano joins the EBRAINS research infrastructure

Posted on 28/06/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano joins EBRAINS, the new digital research infrastructure (RI), created by the EU-funded Human Brain Project (HBP), to foster brain-related research and to help translate the latest scientific discoveries into innovation in medicine and industry, for the benefit of patients and society.

The membership will give POLIMI the opportunity to co-design future iterations of EBRAINS’ cutting-edge tools and services. These state-of-the-art capabilities – which cover data sharing, atlasing, modelling, simulation, high-performance computing, and neurorobotics – aim to help European researchers to address major challenges in brain health, benefiting from insights into data science, brain organization, and artificial intelligence gathered from the EU Flagship Human Brain Project. The Human Brain Project (HBP) has been Europe’s largest brain science project, funded by the EU combining neuroscience, computing, and AI to study the brain and its diseases.

Becoming a member of EBRAINS is a strategic move for Politecnico di Milano. It allows us to promote our research on brain microcircuits and simulations, with a focus on learning mechanisms and neurorobotics. EBRAINS provides advanced tools, resources, and collaboration opportunities. It enhances our visibility and impact on an international scale,

says prof. Alessandra Pedrocchi, responsible for EBRAINS at Politecnico di Milano.

We are very pleased to welcome Politecnico di Milano as an associate member at EBRAINS. The university conducts high-level research on brain modelling, simulation, and neurorobotics, among other areas in neuroscience,

says Paweł Świeboda, CEO of EBRAINS.

The website of EBRAINS

DIANA: studying drugs for brain by miniaturized platform

Posted on 22/06/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano has developed an innovative technological device, for industrial use, aimed at the study of new drugs for the treatment of brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. This is the main result of the European project DIANA (Organ-on-a-chip Drug screenIng device to tArget braiN diseAse), funded in 2019 by the Proof-of Concept call of the ERC (European Research Council).

DIANA brought together universities and companies in a consortium between the Politecnico di Milano and the innovative SME Neuro-Zone srl, specialized in discovery activities to support the development of drugs in the field of neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. The project was enhanced by the involvement of Diego Albani, researcher in neuroscience at the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS in Milan, an expert in innovative pharmacological approaches for neurodegenerative diseases.

The Chip4DBrain platform developed by DIANA is based on a state-of-the-art technology known as” organ-on-a-chip “that allows you to reproduce complex organ functions on systems the size of a microscope slide.
Carmen Giordano, Professor of Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano.

This is a further step towards the development of evolved in vitro models, which can reproduce some of the key characteristics of biological systems, such as the three-dimensionality or the simultaneous presence of different types of cells, just as it is in our brain, to evaluate the potential of a new drug to cross the blood brain barrier and effectively target the brain.

This innovative miniaturized platform is able to integrate in a single in vitro system the blood-brain barrier, which protects our brain from the aggression of molecules and external agents, and a model of brain tissue.

Chip4D Brain has also allowed the implementation of cellular models of the blood brain and brain barrier, already in use at Neuro-Zone, making them closer to the biological profile of a patient thanks to the use of commercial human stem cells.

In an international scenario where the restrictions or ethical assessments towards the use of animal models also in the field of neuroscience are very complex, predictive and advanced in vitro models are increasingly urgent.

The mission that DIANA has faced is highly topical: in the coming decades, brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease will have a significant increase, but unfortunately the development of effective drugs requires a ten-year process, investments of billions of euros to facing a failure rate, which for Alzheimer’s disease alone is close to 95%.

DIANA project factsheet

The project DIANA has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under Grant Agreement No. 899431.

Researcher Cristina Chirizzi wins the brainy 2021 call

Posted on 21/02/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Cristina Chirizzi, a postdoc researcher at the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” at the Politecnico di Milano, has won a scholarship worth €30,000 awarded by Brainy, an association that supports research into brain diseases and neuroscience and which last November published a call for young researchers to finance research projects focused on investigating the reasons leading to the onset of brain tumours in order to be able to fight and treat them in the best possible way.

The project presented by Dr Chirizzi, in collaboration with the Carlo Besta Neurological Institute, is focused on developing technical advances for the visualisation of tumour margins during neurosurgery for the removal of one of the most aggressive forms of malignant brain tumour, glioblastoma. An alternative to the fluorescent biomarkers currently used in the intraoperative setting was therefore proposed, with the aim of increasing their specificity for tumour tissues.

The winner was presented with her award by the association on 21 February 2022 at the Politecnico.

Dr Chirizzi studied Molecular Biotechnology in Turin, where she obtained her Laurea Magistrale (equivalent to Master of Science) in 2013. She took her Ph.D. at the San Raffaele Hospital, where she studied and analysed the development of methods based on magnetic resonance for the visualization of immune cell activity during neuroinflammation processes. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, where she has focused her research on the development of biomaterials and nanosystems for biological applications.