WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND?
I am a material specialist and an analytical chemist. My research interests include the design and characterization of composite materials, hydrogels, nanoparticles, fullerenes and their application in drug delivery, sensoristic, catalysist and energetics and the design, optimization and validation of chromatographic techniques for the environmental monitoring of pollutants such as carcinogenic endocrine disrupting compounds and drug residues.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO DO RESEARCH ON PANCREATIC CANCER?
My grandmother was a doctor and she thought I had the right attitude to become a doctor like her, I used to answer “Grandma, I will help people making medicines”. I am very creative and I found in chemistry my natural dimension thus, I thought I could be more efficient in helping people suffering of different patologies, like cancer and diabetes, in this role. I got in touch with nanotechnology and their application in diagnostic and theragnostic during my master’s thesis… And I felt in love with this research area! I learnt how to develop material for the in-situ drug delivery and for the continuous monitoring of cancer and diabetes markers. I hope my materials can be beneficial in understanding better the pancreatic cancer progression and to help people getting personalized treatments.
WHAT IS YOUR RESEARCH ABOUT?
I take care of developing and customizing optical sensing particles to measure, with high spatial and temporal resolution, the intracellular and extracellular concentration of oxygen and pH in in vitro patients-derived 3D models of pancreatic cancer in order to study cancer and stroma interactions and to quantify drugs efficacy. One image speaks more than hundreds of words and I find so fascinating to observe and track cells behavior adopting high resolution microscopy.
WHAT ARE THE RESERCH PERSPECTIVES AND THE IMPACT OF YOUR WORK?
I hope our research can help patients getting personalized treatments improving the outcomes of their therapies. Many times, it is important to optimize the treatments that are already on the market rather waiting for new ones to be available. For instance, our sensing platforms can also be exploited for drug repurposing, that means we can test and investigate existing drugs for new therapeutic purposes.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO BE PART OF THE I-PCC?
Being part of the I-PCC helps the different research teams focused of the pancreatic cancer study to join forces, connect and share information to speed the understanding of the biological mechanisms involved in solid tumors like the pancreatic cancer.
WHEN YOU ARE NOT IN YOUR LAB WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO?
I do not define myself a researcher but an artist and I always say that “the artist wears the lab coat, not the other way around”. I am very creative and the thing that on top of everything makes me happy is art. I sing since I have memory, Friedrich Nietzsche used to say “Without music, life would be a mistake” and I couldn’t agree more.