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Personale

Alessio Valletti

In July 2015 he joined the Institute of Biomedical Technologies as research scholar but he has been collaborating continuously with it for 8 years.

His research is focused on the intercellular signaling mediated by extracellular vesicles (i.e., exosomes and microvesicles), especially for what concerns death and survival signals in neurodegenerative diseases (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis) and cancer.

In 2008 he received his Master’s Degree in “Medical Biotechnologies and Molecular Medicine” from the University of Bari where he earned also his Ph.D. in “Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics” in 2012.

In 2009 he was awarded a 1-year research scholarship from the University of Milan for the project “Analysis and Characterization of Alternative Splicing Isoforms Differentially Expressed in Normal and Tumoral Tissues”.

During his doctoral studies (2009-2012) his research lines have been focused mainly on the study of gene expression alterations at transcript level in different physiopathological conditions (glioblastoma multiforme, clear cell renal cell carcinoma), with a particular attention to the alternative splicing mechanism. In these projects he has applied the main methodologies aimed to the study of gene expression profiling, from low/medium-throughput techniques, such as RT-qPCR, to high-throughput ones, such as microarray and RNA-seq, in order to identify molecular signatures to be used as biomarkers.

From 2012 he held three consecutive postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Biomembrane and Bioenergetics (IBBE-CNR) on an industrial research project (VIRTUALAB PON01_01297 R&C 2007-2013) in collaboration with a local industry, MASMEC, aimed to develop liquid handling workstations for nucleic acid extraction and sample preparation for research and diagnostic purposes. He also collaborated to the training project “New Technicians for the Advanced Biomedical Industry” because of his specialized expertise in quantitative PCR for gene expression studies.

At the same time, he has deepened his interest and knowledge in genetic engineering (creating a colon cancer HCT116 cell line with an inducible gene involved in the stability of the oncosuppressor p53), and necroptosis (in 2014 he spent 3 months in the group of Dr. Lefkimmiatis and Prof. Zaccolo at the University of Oxford (UK)).

He also held a position as adjunct professor of “Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics” at the Department of Biosciences, Biotechnologies and Biopharmaceutics of the University of Bari for the academic year 2014/2015.