Pieve Emanuele, 13 June (askanews) – In Pieve Emanuele (Milan), a few metres from the hospital wards of the IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas, a new imaging laboratory has been inaugurated, one of the most advanced in Europe: here, specialists are able to use a platform that combines optical and electronic microscopy in a single technology, known by the acronym CLEM.
Thus Prof. Luigi Maria Terracciano, Scientific Director of IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas:
“The goal of Humanitas research is to improve the lives and care of patients through diagnostic and therapeutic solutions; by combining the experience of our researchers with advanced technological platforms we are sure to achieve this goal. From this point of view, the CLEM platform represents an important piece in the translational research that we intend to increase. The platform allows the study of macromolecular biological structures and the generation of quantitative data: it can open the door to structural biology and computational biology. It should be seen as a piece of a broader ecosystem that also includes other technological platforms such as metabolomics, proteomics or even, in the future, structural biophysics”.
The laboratory – located in the Roberto Rocca Innovation Building of Humanitas University – is one of the first in Europe, and the first in Italy, integrated into a research hospital. Leading it, in collaboration with doctors and researchers of Humanitas, is Edoardo D'Imprima, who returned from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg after a PhD at the Max Plank Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt.
“CLEM technology opens a new frontier for biomedical research, as biology is an extremely complex subject in which phenomena that develop in the “macro” are greatly influenced by what happens at the microscopic level. This new technology gives us the possibility to seamlessly connect these two worlds”.
“One application of CLEM technology is the possibility of studying how materials can influence bacterial colonization,” says Roberto Rusconi, associate professor at Humanitas University and head of the Applied Biophysics Laboratory. “This is a big problem for all biomedical devices. With this technology, we can see at the micrometric and nanometric level the interactions of these species with surfaces, in order to avoid infections associated with biomedical devices.”
Researchers can create a sort of “cellular CT”, capable of exploring in 4D – also taking into account the Time factor – the behavior of cells within tissues. A technology that opens new avenues in the understanding of complex diseases, with potential implications for future diagnoses and therapies.
Notizie.it editorial team