Francesca Piro

I started my journey in the lab with high school, becoming a Chemical Head Technician . Then I got Bachelor Degree (BD) in Biotechnoly at Alma Mater University of Bologna. I have done my intership in organic chemistry lab of "Giacomo Ciamician" Institute of Bologna. The title of the project was "Solid-phase Synthesis of integrin ligands for diagnostic and theranostic purpose", in which I was synthetizing RGD peptides for Self-assembled monolayers (SAM) which were used in cancer research. After my BD, I obtained Master Degree (MD) in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Bologna. During this intership, I studied photodynamic therapies for the develpoment of novel anti-microbial strategies for the treatment of antibiotic resistent bacteria. I used phage display technology to engineer M13 and change its tropism to specificily recognize different bacteria and act as a carrier of photoactive molecules. During this period, I was collaborating with Nanobio Interface lab which works at the Chemistry Department "Giacomo CIamician" in Bologna.
I am currently attending my PhD in Synthetic and systems biology for biomedicine at Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), in which I am focusing of the development of novel cancer-immunotherapies, in particular T-cell based therapies. I am currently working on the development of biosensors.