LORIS RIZZELLO

rizzello@ingm.org
+39 02 0066 0325

Loris Rizzello graduated in Biotechnology at the University of Salento in 2008 and obtained a PhD in 2012 at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). He then moved to the University College London (UCL) where he has been awarded with the prestigious Newton International Fellowship from the Royal Society of London, which funds his pioneering research in the field of nanotechnology tools for the treatment of infections. After a period of 5 years spent at UCL, he received the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (Individual Fellowship) and he moved in 2018 to the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC, Barcelona). Here he explores how organoids can be used to simulate the infectious process. In 2020 he is the winner of the ERC-Starting Grant and moves to the University of Milan as Associate Professor of Protein Engineering and, since February 2021, he is also Group Leader at the National Institute of Molecular Genetics.
The team led by Loris Rizzello tries to decode the molecular crosstalk between the host and its pathogen in order to develop new universal therapies able to eradicate intracellular pathogens without inducing drug resistance. The main interest is the study of human tuberculosis, but the eradication methodology can be applied to any other intracellular pathogen. To do this, the team uses a combination of techniques based on live confocal imaging and nanotechnology (polymer nanoparticles).

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