Mar. 3 – While the experiments were conducted in the Netherlands, the research is entirely made in Italy – even better – made in Pisa. Supergravity can help researchers develop applications on regenerative medicine for the skeletal system, and test new effective drugs for the stimulation of stem cells. The results were published in the International Journal of Nanomedicine, prestigious international scientific journal. The experiment was conducted by a team from Pisa under the campaign “Spin Your Thesis!” sponsored by the European Space Agency. The Italian group (formed by graduate students in Biorobotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa and PhD candidates from the Center for Micro Bio-Robotics of the Italian Institute of Technology in Pisa, based in Pontedera) was one of the few selected by the European Agency to conduct experiments in altered gravity. The research was carried out at the Large Diameter Centrifuge of the European Space Research and Technology Centre, based in Noordwijk. The center has the operational instrumentation that allows experiments in hypergravity, up to 20 times stronger than Earth’s gravity. “The results – says Gianni Ciofani, team leader at the Italian Institute of Technology – have allowed us to demonstrate how hypergravity may provide an important stimulus to guide cell behavior. This is still quite unexplored and holds significant potential in biomedicine, for applications ranging from regenerative medicine to the screening of new drugs. Thanks to the European Space Agency, our group has been given a unique opportunity to use instrumentation otherwise difficult to access.” This isn’t the first time an Italian team is selected for these experiments: last year, Italian researchers traveled to the Netherlands to assess the effects of hypergravity on potential genetic muscle therapies. (Red)
