Annachiara SCALZONE profile

Annachiara is a postdoctoral researcher in Bioengineering at Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia from June 2022. She obtained a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical engineering from the University of Federico II in 2015, Master's degree in Bionanotechnologies in 2018 from the Polytechnic University of Turin, and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Newcastle University in UK in 2022.

During the Ph.D., she developed practical skills in the field of tissue engineering, with a particular focus on biofabrication technologies such as lithography, electrospinning, 3D printing, and bioprinting. Her doctoral research project focused on the development and validation of osteochondral tissue models, both scaffold-free (e.g. cellular spheroids) (Tissue Engineering Part A 28 (1-2), 84-93, 2022) and scaffold-based (thermoresponsive or photocurable hydrogels) (Advanced Healthcare Materials 12 (2), 2202030, 2023 & Materials Today Bio 14, 100287, 2022), to investigate the osteoarthritis development process and explore the therapeutic effects of nanoparticles containing biological molecules (Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology 11, 1167623, 2023). Her PhD thesis was rewarded by the European society of biomaterials with the Julia Polak European doctorate award in 2023. Since June 2022, her research, under the guidance of Prof. P. Netti, focuses on optimizing bioprinting processes for the automated and large-scale production of endogenous in vitro tissue equivalents (e.g. skin, brain and testis). This involves starting with microtissues precursors composed cells seeded onto porous gelatin microscaffolds or cellular spheroids/organoids. The primary goal of her research is to utilize these bioprinted tissues, to deepen the understanding of physio- and pathophysio-logical processes.

https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-2354-8509