The core business is mainly in the development of cardiovascular devices, so we work on surface modifications at the micro-scale for the generation of luminal endothelialisation. So basically we want to provide a surface such that endothelial cells will adhere and proliferate in order not to have contact between blood and artificial materials. However, we develop also technology and basically engineering technologies. Some of this technology finds its application also in fundamental biology and particularly in cancer biology.
Are there practical applications?
Yes, in general for whatever implies the application of a human implant but also specifically to cancer biology.
Could you describe clinical applications?
What we have developed recently is technology for, as I said, cardiovascular implant integration. We are within a larger consortium that aims at developing a full artificial heart. This is called the Zurich Heart Consortium, including ETH Zürich, the University of Zürich and the University Hospital. My group and I are working mostly in the development of the surface modifications in order to obtain an autologous endothelial tissue cell surface. Besides that we are working also with materials, so we’re providing materials that would reduce the inflammation around implants and in particular there we have developed a surface modification of bacterial cellulose which we aim to be using as a coating for implants. This is probably the invention that you’re referring to. With that we are starting a spin-off of ETH, so the entrepreneur part of my career, and basically we aim at coming into the market and selling this invention as a shell against inflammation induced by artificial materials in the body.
Could you describe your collaboration network?
It is very easy in Zürich to collaborate; there are many institutions, academic institutions, within Zürich, within Switzerland, but we are very exposed also to Europe and European institutions. Particularly at the point at which we develop technology that may find their application in fundamental biology, at that point we need to interface and interact and collaborate with biological oriented institutes such as the one here, IFOM. So we first took contact with Professor Elisabetta Dejana a few years ago, we started working on endothelium, and there we learned a lot about the biology of endothelium. Later on we stepped into Giorgio Scita and with him now we’re working on actin, actomyosin force generation within the larger field of cancer biology, and with Professor Marco Foiani as well.
As a nanotechnologist how is it to work with biologists?
In reality I was trained in Italy as a biologist and then I did my PhD in physics. This, for me, represents a step back to biology. So for a long time I changed my knowledge and I changed my activity into being more on the physics side or on the engineering side but I was always thinking that at some point my technology should have come back to biology. I think we are at the moment now.
What are the future scenarios in the field?
It’s quite clear also for the conference we’ve been to today that mechanics and physics are now finding their relevance and place in cancer cell biology and in general in biology. People for a long time have neglected that around the biology there is also metrics, tissue that is non-living but still influences the living activities of cells. This is mostly regulated by physical parameters, by forces. So this is great news for us since we were working on micro- and nano-scale force sensors, for example, for a long time with different applications. Now these two worlds, engineering and biology, are coming close enough that we can both mutually benefit from this interaction.
Many applications are in vitro. When will we see more in vivo applications?
This is true that most applications are studied in vitro. We try to model in vitro what happens in vivo and this we do by including both relevant biological elements like this, specific cells, autologous cells from patients, for example. But specifically we want to reproduce in vitro the effect of forces. For example, when we study endothelialisation then we reproduce exactly the flow conditions that are present in the body. When we study cancer cell activity we reproduce the topography or the mechanical forces which are encountered by cancer cells. With that basically we make one step towards the in vivo condition and where we are closer to having any type of in vivo application is really in the development of devices or in the development of diagnostic solutions.
