Professor Vittoria Raffa from the University of Pisa has been awarded the Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), one of the most prestigious and competitive funding programmes in the European Union that supports senior researchers in pursuing ambitious and scientifically groundbreaking projects. Among over 2,500 proposals submitted, Raffa emerged as one of the 281 winners, with only 25 from Italy (9 in the Life Sciences sector), who will share a total of EUR 721 million.
Her project, named GAP, deals with one of the most complex challenges in neuroscience: providing precise instructions for damaged nervous tissue to re-establish its connections. Neurons must extend their projections – axons – to establish the right connections. The navigation of axons represents a critical phase in the neural repair process: a functioning nervous system is achieved by ensuring that some axons regenerate in the correct direction, while others are actively inhibited. If these instructions are incorrect, functional neuronal circuits cannot be formed. Current technologies do not effectively guide axon growth in nervous tissue. GAP proposes an innovative solution: the use of “macromolecular switches” to engineer neurons to create a “molecular map” and guide axons along the correct pathways, paving the way for new therapeutic strategies to address spinal trauma, brain damage, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Vittoria Raffa, born in Reggio Calabria, holds a degree in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Nanotechnologies. She is a Marie Curie Scholar and a Full Professor at the Department of Biology of the University of Pisa. The field of molecular biology, synthetic biology, and nanotechnologies has been at the centre of Raffa’s research interests for years, with a particular focus on the study of gene expression regulation and the modulation of cellular functions through the development of rationally engineered macromolecules. Currently, Raffa leads the laboratory of Nanomedicine and Molecular Biology (NAMOBIO), through which she has secured over EUR 8 million in competitive research funding by participating in excellent calls, including the Italian Fund for Science, the European Research Council (ERC), the European Innovation Council (EIC), and the Human Frontier Science Program.
