Can you tell us about your academic background and the path that led you from your degree in Biological Sciences in Milan to your experience in the US? What were your main inspirations?
The curiosity to understand how the mechanisms that regulate our lives work, how organs work and then cells and down to molecules, which interact with each other in a perfect and magical way, was the driving force behind my enthusiastic dedication to biomedical research.
After graduating in biological sciences from the State University of Milan, I did an internship at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research where we studied autacoid hormones: small hormones that regulate the delicate balance between contraction and dilation of arteries and platelet aggregation. We influence their balance and affect, atherosclerosis, heart attacks, and many circulatory mattie.
You worked on major biomedical research projects in the United States. What were the most significant challenges you faced during this time?
From there I left for Vanderbilt University, one of the top ranked U.S. universities. Vanderbilt is in Nashville, Tennessee, the home of country music. So, in four years, between country music at the Grand Ole Opry and endless hours among test tubes and libraries, I got my PhD in Biochemistry and discovered a new hormone receptor thanks to, then emerging, biotechnology techniques.
When I returned to Italy it was the time when the AIDS epidemic was rampant. There were 65,000 young people in Italy who were HIV-positive, all with a bleak prognosis. The virus attacks the very cells responsible for organizing the immune response against the virus itself--a Trojan horse. At St. Raphael's, in a prestigious Department of Virology and Infectious Diseases, I studied how the immune defenses of those rare people work who, despite being exposed to infection for years, do not become infected with HIV-1.
The strand of the study of immune defenses and the molecular struggle between the host and the viral or bacterial invader has been the focus of my group's research activity supported by national, European and NIAD grants.
After your return to Italy, you took on the role of Lead Scientist in the field of virology and immunology and approached the investment world. How did the decision to become a business angel and join IAG come about?
In the last few years of research, I have developed a probiotic that can amplify the production of antibiotics produced naturally by the human gut. I have also demonstrated in vivo that it can block various intestinal infections that normally have inauspicious outcomes.
The project was promising. I convinced investors to get the seed started, but the project stalled in the face of disputes with the host institution over patent and intellectual property management.
This experience introduced me to the world of startups and Angel Investing, which fascinated me to the point of wanting to participate in this venture myself.
The issue of diversity is increasingly relevant in academic and professional contexts. What is your view on diversity in the life science sector?
I can say with certainty that the quality of research in Italy in recent years has grown exponentially with laboratories organized and equipped enough to compete with the best European and American facilities.
The same cannot be said about equal opportunities. Academic research environments are still heavily affected by barony and nepotism. Women are still in the minority today, and talent and expertise are not enough to get them into the higher levels of the hierarchy; there is always a need for direct or indirect support from the male establishment.
How can investment in life science research and development foster breakthrough scientific discoveries and promote significant advances in the field of medicine?
Medical research inevitably depends on funding and grows in proportion to it. Private funding in life-science startups should favor initiatives untied from academia, to help overcome the Italian limitation in which most funding is filtered through this world. Which, as I have already said, is not structured to offer equal opportunities.