Mirella Profita

Respiratory diseases are leading causes of death worldwide. The area of scientific activities/interest of our group is associated with the translational medicine in the field of innate and adptative immunity of chronic inflammation and cancer of the lung.

Our topic is an innovative field of research showing applications of human pulmonary 3D models (air liquid interface culture, organotypic spheroids, organoid models, scaffold based models). These 3D models may be used as model human lung in vivo-like for modeling lung disease. Furthermore, they may be considered as a platform to study cell-cell interaction (structural and immune cells) during the mechanisms of immune response and for screening effectiveness of drugs. Our aims are to create in vitro/ex vivo models using human primary cells and cell lines that can prospectively lead to translational studies, to identify systems more efficient by simultaneously fostering the mechanistic and understanding of the human diseases immunology. Our effort combined with high quality techniques of lab (omics, imaging etc.) might increase the expansion of new methods into the scientific community and pharmaceutical industry.