the AmnioSMART team

About Us

AmnioSMART proposes an interdisciplinary and integrative approach based on the close collaboration of 5 international Partner Units with complementary expertise from Italy, Portugal, Belgium and The Netherlands.

The project will combine: regenerative medicine; stem cell biology, smart biomaterial science for advanced delivery, 3D bioprinting, tissue modelling, and technology transfer skills.

Coordinator

Sveva Bollini

IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genova, Italy

Prof. Sveva Bollini graduated from the University of Padova, Italy, in Medical Biotechnology in 2005 and obtained her PhD from the same University in 2009. From 2009 until 2013 she worked on the reactivation of epicardial stromal cells as endogenous mechanisms of cardiac regeneration as Post-Doctoral Research Associate first in the Molecular Medicine Unit, at the Institute of Child Health – University College of London and then in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics of the University of Oxford, UK.

In 2014 she was presented with the “Rita Levi Montalcini” Young Investigator Award from the Italian Ministry of Research and Education (MIUR), a national programme to attract back to Italy young researchers working abroad and allow them to start their independent career.

Currently she serves as Associate Professor in Experimental Biology in the Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Genova and as Research Associate at IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino in Genova, Italy. Her research mainly focuses on the functional characterization and engineering of human fetal and perinatal amniotic fluid stem cell-derivatives, including extracellular vesicles to enhance endogenous mechanisms of cardioprotection following ischemic and cardiotoxic injury and to rejuvenate myocardial renewal.

She is Member of the Cardiovascular Sub-Committee of the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy (ISCT), and she is also serving as Nucleus Member of the ESC Working Group of Cardiovascular Regenerative and Reparative Medicine and she is also a Council Member of the International Society for Heart Research – European Section.

Bollini Lab Members in the AmnioSMART team:

Pietro Arnaldi

Pietro Arnaldi obtained his PhD in Bioengineering and Bioeletronics from the University of Genova (Italy) in2022, working on the fabrication of scaffolds for in vitro neuronal cultures. In 2021, he was a visiting PhD Student at University of Victoria (BC, Canada). From 2022 to 2024, he was a Post-Doc researcher at the Department of Experimental Medicine at the University of Genova, focusing on advanced microscopy approaches to study motor-neuron diseases. Since 2024, he is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino (Genova, Italy) under the supervision of Prof. Sveva Bollini, working on the identification of cardioactive secretome fractions from human amniotic fluid progenitor cell. His research interests are 3D in vitro cultures, extracellular vesicles and disease modeling.

Partner 2

Ornella Parolini

Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli, Rome, Italy

Prof. Parolini has worked at prestigious scientific institutions such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, USA (1991–1994), and the Department of Immunology at the University of Vienna, first as a Visiting Scientist (1995–1998) and then as Head of the Molecular Immunology Laboratory (1998–2002). After ten years abroad, Prof. Parolini returned to Brescia with the task of establishing a research center within the Fondazione Poliambulanza Hospital Institute and, in November 2001, she assumed the position of Director of the “E. Menni” Research Center (CREM).

Since 2004, she has begun teaching activities as an adjunct professor at Italian universities and abroad as a Visiting Professor at the University of Granada (from 2009 to present) and at Chengdu University, China (from 2014 to 2017). At the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, she has held the following positions: since 2016, Full Professor of Applied Biology at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery; from 2016 to 2019, Director of the Institute of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology; from 2017 to 2020, President of the Bachelor’s Degree program in Health Biotechnology; since 2017, Director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine Research (CROME); since 2018, Coordinator of the PhD program in Experimental and Translational Medicine; since 2019, Coordinator of the Master’s Degree program in Biotechnology for Personalized Medicine; since 2020, Director of the Master’s program in Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering and Head of the Biobank for Personalized Medicine at the “Agostino Gemelli” University Hospital Foundation IRCCS.”

Parolini Lab members in AmnioSMART:

Alessandra Spanò

Partner 3

Rui L. Reis

Ricardo A. Pires

University of Minho; I3Bs - Research Institute on Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biomimetics, Braga, Portugal

Prof. Rui L. Reis is an expert in natural-origin biomaterials (e.g. starch, chitosa, silk fibroin, gellan gum, carragenan, hyaluronic acid, ulvan, xanthan, collagen, etc.). He and his group originally proposed some of these biopolymers for a range of biomedical applications, including medical devices, drug delivery carriers, degradable constructs and tissue engineering scaffolding for different tissues. He has been combining the development of biomaterials with the use of biological components, namely stem cells from different origin, e.g. bone marrow, adipose tissue, umbilical cord and embryonic. His group has been working on the engineering of different biological tissues, e.g. bone, cartilage, skin, tendons, cardiac and neurological tissues. Furthermore, he has been responsible for several co- operation programs, with Universities and Companies in UK, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Ireland, Singapore, USA, Canada, South Korea, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, among many others.

Reis Lab members in AmnioSMART:

Partner 4

Maurilio Sampaolesi

KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

The team of Prof. Sampaolesi focuses on the transplantation of mesodermal stem cells to promote muscle repair in animal models for muscular and cardiac dystrophies. They reported that intra-arterial delivery of mesoangioblasts - vessel associated stem cells -, results in the extensive recovery of dystrophin expression, normal muscle morphology and function in small and large animal models of muscular dystrophies. By dissecting candidate signaling pathways, they demonstrated that Notch and BMP dictate mesoangioblast cell fate. The group has also extensive experience in miRNA analysis and perturbations thereof in a degenerating cardiac environment. They provided evidence of long-term beneficial impact of AAV-mediated miRNA therapies in a transgenic model of severe dilated cardiomyopathy.

Understanding the degenerative and spontaneous regenerative processes in muscles is clearly also important for the current extensive research efforts to promote long-term regeneration. Although stem cells offer hope of new therapies for MD patients, several problems (limited availability, control of cell fate, and allograft rejection) need to be addressed before therapeutic applications may become feasible. The Sampaolesi group demonstrated that despite reprogramming of somatic cells to a pluripotent state, the myogenic potential is retained due to a durable epigenetic memory. Combining RNA- and miRNA-sequencing studies, the Sampaolesi group defined for the first time miRNA cocktails that promote the myogenic potential of human mesodermal progenitors. Thus, epigenetically-imprinted pluripotent stem cells represent an interesting source of cells for both medical and more general scientific studies and applications the Sampaolesi team is pursuing.

Sampaolesi Lab members in AmnioSMART:

Vittoria Marini

Margalida Campaner Socias

Partner 5

Monika Gladka

Amsterdam University Medical Centers Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Monika Gladka is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator at the Department of Medical Biology at Amsterdam University Medical Centers. She has 16 years of experience in molecular biology and animal studies. She did her PhD in the lab of Prof. de Windt, where she studied gene regulation during progression to heart failure. After that, she joined the lab of Prof. van Rooij where she focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of cardiac regeneration.
Her current research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate cardiac repair, intending to identify new players to develop novel, improved gene therapies. She uses several state-of-the-art techniques, such as single-cell sequencing, enabling an in-depth mechanistic understanding of the biological processes in injured hearts. Beyond her scientific pursuits, she actively contributes to several cardiac societies, serving as a council member of the European section of the International Society of Heart Research (ISHR) and a nucleus member of the CARE working group from the European Society of Cardiology. Additionally, she serves as an associate editor at the Journal of Molecular Therapy.

Gladka Lab members in AmnioSMART:

Rocco Caliandro