Gabriele D'Uva Archives

January 15, 2018December 28, 2020

D’Uva lab receives Cariplo grant award on cancer and cardiotoxicity

We have just received very good news: we won the research grant “Cariplo – Young Researchers“.
This grant will allow us, in parallel to ongoing studies in the field of cardiac regeneration following a heart attack, to expand our research on cancer and the emerging problem of cardiotoxicity of anticancer therapies.
Cardiotoxicity, i.e. toxic effects on heart function, is responsible for a poor quality of life and reduced survival of cancer patients, regardless of the oncologic prognosis. The aim of our research is to develop innovative strategies to limit these side effects while increasing the efficacy of anti-cancer therapies targeting HER2 (a well-known oncogene also known as ERBB2) in breast cancer patients.
The project is in collaboration with the University of Bologna and Biomedical Research Foundation / University of Turin.
These funds will also give us the opportunity to recruit another researcher into my team. Soon we will post the details.
Happy 2018 to everyone!

November 16, 2017March 19, 2018

Symposium on heart regeneration 2017

We are organizing a “Symposium on heart regeneration: Direct stimulation of cardiogenesis as a novel strategy for treating heart failure”. The meeting will be held at our institution (Scientific and Technological Pole, IRCCS MultiMedica, Italy) on November 16th 2017. Invited speakers include our collaborators and international leaders in heart regeneration, namely Prof. E.Tzahor (Weizmann Institute, Israel), Prof. J.Bakkers (Hubrecht Institute, The Netherlands) and Prof. Gilbert Weidinger (Ulm University, Germany).

May 1, 2017January 15, 2018

D’Uva lab receives ERA-CVD grant award on cardiovascular disease

We are very happy to receive a research grant “ERA-CVD Call 2016 for Transnational Research Projects on Cardiovascular Diseases” of European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. This grant gives us the opportunity to establish our lab in Italy, in IRCCS MultiMedica (Milan)!

The project, in collaboration with Hubrecht Institute (Netherlands), Ulm University (Germany) and Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), will investigate heart regeneration using a comparative approach between different species.

Ischemic heart disease, such as myocardial infarction, causes a massive loss of cardiomyocytes and leads to the formation of fibrotic scar tissue, resulting in impaired cardiac function and ultimately, heart failure. Recently, it has been demonstrated that myocardium is naturally regenerated in the human heart. However, the rate of replacement is too low to repair large areas of damaged myocardium. Stimulating the very low intrinsic proliferation rate of cardiomyocytes is a promising strategy for cardiac repair in patients with heart failure. To identify such repair signals, this project will use zebrafish, where cardiomyocyte regeneration occurs naturally, and mice, where it does not. Different possible reasons for the difference in the regenerative capacity of lower vertebrate versus mammals will be explored. The goal is to develop regenerative medicine strategies based on endogenous cardiomyocyte capacities.