Assistant Professor of Biochemistry
Speaker
Research and Professional Experience
Between 1998 and 1999, as his civil service duty, dr. Ivano Eberini worked at the Laboratory of Neuroimmunology of Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri", Milano. Between 2004 and 2008, he was research assistant at the University of Milan. Between 2008 and 2012 he moved as post-doc fellow to Centro Dislipidemie at Ospedale di Niguarda Ca' Granda. Between 2012 and 2015 he held the position of Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Milan. As of March 1st, 2016 he was granted tenure for the same position.
As Head of the Computational Biochemistry and Biophysics Laboratory, Dr. Eberini headed the first research group at University of Milano to focus on computational biochemistry. His current research focuses on the in silico modelling of the 3D arrangement of structurally uncharacterized proteins and the simulation of their behaviour in solution as well as of their interactions with ligands. In these investigations dr. Eberini co-works with colleagues carrying out in vitro and, in few cases, in vivo tests; combining different approaches lets link the experimental observation of a biological effect with the comprehension of the underlying molecular mechanism. The proteins he studied through this approach belong to a few classes: receptors, enzymes and carriers/transporters. Among the former, and most relevant to the present research proposal, his attention has been primarily focused on GPCRs.
He has demonstrated the ability of oxysterols to interact with different, instead of unique, such receptors. Promiscuous binding is an innovative concept in receptor function as a mechanism to transversally operate many of them and coordinate their activity: indeed, the GPCRs he has studied - EBI2, CXCR2 and GPR17 - are involved in oxidative stress, inflammation and neurodegeneration. For GPR17, dr. Eberini had obtained a 3D model and found a number of selective high-affinity ligands, which give promise to foster recovery from demyelinating conditions; he recently protected their intellectual property with an international patent. He received grants from national and international institutions; among them, Euromix, an H2020 project granted by the European Union, is aimed at developing an experimentally verified, tiered strategy for the risk assessment of mixtures of multiple chemicals, included antimycotic azoles. Dr. Eberini is co-author of more than 90 publications on peer-reviewed international journals.
Patents:
- PCT/IB2011/054865 Gpr17 modulating compounds, diagnostic and therapeutic uses thereof
- PCT/EP2012/058500 Gpr17 receptor modulators
TOPIC: Homology Modelling
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