News

Examinations 2017/18

28 August 2018

The College has completed in July/August the annual analysis and reporting of students academic progress. A brief outlineof the results is available in the web page Academic Life Examinations 2017/18. A full account of the College academic performance in 2017/18 will be presented in the Annual College Assembly on 1 October 2018.

 

Inhibiting Protein Aggregation

21 July 2018

On Wednesday the 25th of July 2018 Daniel Segal of the School of Molecular Cell Biology & Biotechnology at Tel-Aviv University will give a seminar entitled Inhibiting aggregation of amyloidogenic proteins as a strategy for treating neurodegeneration at 12.00 noon in the College Lecture theatre.

There is now considerable evidence that protein misfolding and aggregation play a fundamental role in several neurodegenerative diseases and the search for compounds that may effectively inhibit this process may have considerable potential for treatment.  D Segal will report a series of landmark studies in which he and his colleagues have been able to identify small molecules that disrupt the formation of toxic protein aggregates, at least in the test tube.

All College students are warmly invited to attend this seminar lecture, espcially students reading Medicine, Biology, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here.

Proteins at Fluid-Fluid Interfaces

03 June 2018

On Tuesday the 5th of June 2018 Marek Cieplak of the Institute of Physics of the Polish Institute of Sciences will give a seminar on Proteins at fluid-fluid interfaces at 11.00 am in the College Lecture theatre.

The behaviour of proteins is greatly affected by their environment, namely their presence in solution or at water-air, water-oil or water-water interfacese.  The physiological activity of certain proteins, for  example lung surfactant proteins, depends indeed on their ability to partition specific domains in the water environment and other ones in the air envirnoment thus regulating the surface tension of the alveoli or their role as a barrier to pathogens.  The study of proteins at fluid-fluid interfaces, however, impacts on pathology as well as it may impact on their propensity to oligomerise and form protein aggregates as found in certain neurodegenerative diseasese (Parkinson, Alzheimer, etc).  M Cieplak will discuss the conformational changes that proteins may encounter at fluid-fluid interfaces and how this may promote the formation of high order protein aggregates.

All College students are warmly invited to attend this seminar lecture, espcially students reading Medicine, Biology, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here.

Antibacterial Resistance

22 May 2018

On the 23rd of May Esther Kuenzli, of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and the University of Basel, will give a seminar on International spreading of antibacterial resistance at 3.00 pm in the College lecture theatre.

International travel has become on important mechanism for the spreading of antibacterial resistance and notably the spreading of Enterobacteriaceae able to produce extend spectrum be lactamases, enzymes able to inactivate one of the major classes of antibiotics currently available.  E Keuenzli will discuss the impact of international travel on the spread of antibacterial resistance and measures to counteract this major medical problem.

All College students are warmly invited to attend this seminar lecture, espcially students reading Medicine, Biology, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here.

Multiresistant Tuberculosis

21 May 2018

On the 22nd of May Daniela Cirililo, of the Scientific Institute S Raffaele in Milan, will give a seminar on Multiresistant Tuberculosis at 3.00 pm in the College lecture theatre.

Tuberculosis, a complex infectious disease caused by the bacterium M tuberculosis, is one of the diseases that have shaped the course of human history and that remains inadequately controlled.  Although a vaccine has been available for nearly a century, its efficacy is limited limited and a number of M tuberculosis strains resistant to the antibiotics currently available have emerged over time. D Cirillo will discuss mechainsms of resistance and the impact of the emergence of multiresistant strains for the control of tuberculosis.

All College students are warmly invited to attend this seminar lecture, espcially students reading Medicine, Biology, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here.

Ageing and Disease

08 May 2018

A Colloquium organised by Collegio A Volta, the University of Pavia and Kingl's College London will take place on the 10th of May in Aula U Foscolo (65, Strada Nuova) and will address recent advances in research on Ageing and Disease. The changes in housing, the increase in food production, progress in the treatment of infectious diseases and general public health measures have not only led to a major increase in the human population but have also more than double human lifespan in the last two hundred years. The link between ageing and disease is a complex and this Colloquium will focus on selected major areas of research.

Image: Five Characters in a Comic Scene, c. 1490 by Leonardo da Vinci

 

M Fraccaro Lecture 2017/18

08 April 2018

The 2017/18 M Fraccaro Lecture, organised an nually by Collegio Cairoli and Collegio Volta will be given at 5.00 pm on 9th April 2018 in the main University lecture hall (Aula Magna) by Prof M De Luca at the University of Modena. 

The lecture entitled: Life-saving regeneration of the entire human epidermis by transgenic stem cells and will illustrate ground-breaking progress in curing a child with a life-threatening skis disease (Junctional epidermolysis bullosa, genetic disease caused by mutations in genes encodingthe basement membrane component laminin 5). The approach pursued by Prof M De Luca and his collaborators involved correction of the faulty gene in skin stem cells in culture followed by propagation and implantation of the cells with the corrected gene to enable the growth of the entire body skin. The results of this study were published in November 2017 in the journal Nature and the article is available here for downloading.

All College students are warmly invited to attend this important lecture.  The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here.  The lecture will be followed by refreshments at Collegio Cairoli.

Image: a human skin cell, known as keratinocyte, in culture.

Light Microscopy

18 March 2018

The College is organising a major seminar series on Light Microscopy from Monday the 19th of March to Thursday the 22nd.  Light microscopy has undergone dramative developments in the last 10-20 years that culminated in the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Eric Betzig, Stefan W Hell and William E Moerner for the development of so-called super resolution fluorescence microscopy. 

The College series will involve a total of 8 seminars (2 per day at 2.00 and 4.00 pm respectively) and will cover both the foundations and the most recent advances in advanced imaging methods, super resolution, localisation microscopy and multi photon microscopy.   All College students are invited to participate, especially students of the Biology, Biotechnology, Bioengineering, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Medicine Courses.  The poster of the series can be downloaded here. Image: DNA inside a cell's nucleus by super-resolution microscopy,

Speakers, dates and topics

William B Amos, Cambridge
Monday 19th March. 2.00 pm
Resolution and the nature of optical images

William B Amos, Cambridge
Monday 19th March. 4.00 pm
Ray and wave optics and practical microscopy

William B Amos, Cambridge
Tuesday 20th March. 2.00 pm
Polarisation and interference methods

William B Amos, Cambridge
Wednesday 21th March. 2.00 pm
New directions in optical microscopy

Rainer Heintzmann, Jena
Tuesday 20th March. 4.00 pm
Super resolution microscopy

Gail McConnell, Strathclyde
Wednesday 21st March. 4.00 pm
Lasers and advanced imaging methods

Susan Cox, London
Thursday 22nd March. 2.00 pm
Localisation microscopy

Veronika AM Te Boekhorst, Houston.
Thursday 22nd March. 4.00 pm
Multiphoton microscopy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tempo of Cancer

08 December 2017

Chi Van Dang, Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and a leading cancer researcher based at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia will give the opening lecture of the PhD Programme of the University of Pavia on Monday the 11th of December in Aula Magna (Strada Nuova) at 10.30.  The lecture, entitled Convergence of Circadian Clock and Cancer: Time as an Inconvenient Truth, will tackle a new area in cancer research that may greatly extend our understanding of the disease.  The poster of the lecture can downloaded here and all College students of Biology, Biotechnology and Medicine are strongly encouraged to attend.  Chi Van Dang will be a guest of the College during his stay in Pavia.

Abstract
Cancer metabolism as a field of research was founded almost 100 years ago by Otto Warburg, who described the propensity for cancers to convert glucose to lactate despite the presence of oxygen, which in yeast diminishes glycolytic metabolism known as the Pasteur effect. In the past 20 years, the resurgence of interest in cancer metabolism provided significant insights into processes involved in maintenance metabolism of non-proliferating cells and proliferative metabolism, which is regulated by proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressors in normal proliferating cells. In cancer cells, depending on the driving oncogenic event, metabolism is re-wired for nutrient import, redox homeostasis, protein quality control, and biosynthesis to support cell growth and division. In general, resting cells rely on oxidative metabolism, while proliferating cells rewire metabolism toward glycolysis, which favors many biosynthetic pathways for proliferation. Oncogenes such as MYC, BRAF, KRAS, and PI3K have been documented to rewire metabolism in favor of proliferation. These cell intrinsic mechanisms, however, are insufficient to drive tumorigenesis because immune surveillance continuously seeks to destroy neo-antigenic tumor cells. In this regard, evasion of cancer cells from immunity involves checkpoints that blunt cytotoxic T cells, which are also attenuated by the metabolic tumor microenvironment, which is rich in immuno-modulating metabolites such as lactate, 2-hydroxyglutarate, kyneurenine, and the proton (low pH). As such, a full understanding of tumor metabolism requires an appreciation of the convergence of cancer cell intrinsic metabolism and that of the tumor microenvironment including stromal and immune cells.

Biography
Chi Van Dang oversees the execution of Ludwig’s scientific strategy, with a special focus on the operations and staffing of the Lausanne, Oxford and San Diego Branches of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. He also manages the alignment of their efforts with those of the six independent Ludwig Centers across the US to further cultivate collaboration within Ludwig’s global research community. As a researcher, Chi Van Dang is best known for his work on the molecular signaling pathways and mechanisms that govern the unusual metabolism of cancer cells, which require vast quantities of energy and molecular building blocks to sustain proliferation. Chi Van Dang's laboratory was the first to show that a master regulator of gene expression named MYC—a gene whose mutation or aberrant expression is associated with many types of cancer—alters the utilization of a key sugar in cancer cells. This body of work bolstered the hypothesis that cancer cells can become addicted to their reengineered metabolic signaling and that disrupting these pathways could be a powerful approach to treating cancer. Chi Van Dang currently leads a Ludwig laboratory housed at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Prior to joining Ludwig, he served as Director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where he launched a series of Translational Centers of Excellence to develop novel interventions for various cancers. He began his career in medicine and research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he was Director of the Division of Hematology and eventually became the Johns Hopkins Family Professor in Oncology Research, the Vice Dean for Research and Director of the Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering. He has authored over 250 scientific and medical articles, book chapters and two books and am a member of the National Academy of Medicine (Institute of Medicine), American Academy of Arts & Sciences and chair the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors.

Image courtesy: http://www.eyeofscience.de/en/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New students' restaurant

04 December 2017

A first class students' restaurant will open tomorrow Tuesday the 5th of December 2017 in via A Bassi, opposite the Department of Physics.  The new restaurant, the result of a project led by EDiSU and carried out in close coordination with the University, will provide a crucial service to undergraduates and postgraduates who study at the Departments located in via T Taramelli, C Forlanini and A Bassi (Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Physics, Biochemistry, Physiology, Anatomy, Genetics, Pathology and Forensic Medicine) and to the students of nearby Collegio C Golgi and A Volta.

The new restaurant represents an extensive refurbishment of an earlier facility and provides both the excellent food that students may expect in this part of the world as well as modern and high-quality furniture and logistics.  

College students are warmly invited to attend the opening ceremony tomorrow (12.00 noon) led by EDiSU President P Benazzo, EDiSU Finance Director C Grignani and the Chancellor of the University F Rugge, and make regular use of the new facility.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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