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

Partner 1

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

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Parolini Lab members in AmnioSMART:

Partner 3

Rui L. Reis

Ricardo Pires

University of Minho Braga, Portugal

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Reis Lab members in AmnioSMART:

Partner 4

Maurilio Sampolesi

KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium

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Sampaolesi Lab members in AmnioSMART:

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