The last time an Italian scientist had been among the top scientists under 40 was in 2016. An absence that was felt, until now, as Luca Tiberi, group leader of the Armenise Harvard Laboratory of Brain Disorders and Cancer at the University of Trento and professor at the Cibio Department of the University, has just received the EMBO Young Investigators Award 2020.
"This award demonstrates that Italian research can achieve high level results with proper funding" says Luca Tiberi. "Unfortunately, the funding we have received for the most part, were from private entities: the Armenise Harvard Foundation, AIRC and CARITRO. In my opinion, to make Italian basic research more competitive at European level we need first of all to adopt public funding policies that recognize the importance of research – through better grants, more regular funding, exemption from VAT, etc. Secondly, we should stimulate patronage, to integrate public funding with private capitals that benefit from favorable taxation policies".
Thanks to the prize, Tiberi and his research group at the University of Trento will now be able to further the study of organoids, which in the future will be increasingly used to create affordable models of tumors to test drugs and explore new treatment options.
The research group led by Tiberi has recently achieved important results in the study of brain tumors. Using organoids grown in the lab, the group discovered an important mechanism of tumor formation in medulloblastoma, the most common brain tumor of childhood which can also affect adults.
The very promising career of an under-40 researcher
With a degree in Medical biotechnologies from the University of Bologna and a PhD in Molecular oncology from the University of Trieste, Luca Tiberi moved to Brussels to study brain tumors at Pierre Vanderhaeghen's laboratory. He spent almost 8 years in Belgium, specializing in the technologies required to grow brain organoids, 'in vitro brains' that are essential to study the mechanisms of brain tumors.
In 2016 he won the Armenise Harvard Career Development Award (CDA), which grants funding to conduct basic research in biomedicine at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and in Italy. The Career Development Award (CDA) amounts to up to one million USD for 3 to 5 years, and so far benefited 27 young scientists who opened their laboratories in Italy. With the 2016 Career Development Award, Luca Tiberi came back to Italy and opened the Armenise Harvard Laboratory of Brain Disorders and Cancer at the Cibio Department of the University of Trento.
In 2018 he won a My First AIRC Grant, funded by Fondazione AIRC – the Italian association for cancer research. In 2019 he was awarded a grant by Fondazione CARITRO to create brain and lung organoids.
A success for the Career Development Award
Indirectly, this award recognizes the success of the Armenise Harvard Foundation which, through the Career Development Award program, attracts young scientists to Italy to establish their research teams in biomedicine in different research centers of excellence.
Luca Tiberi is in fact the third recipient of a Career Development Award (out of 28) to receive the EMBO Young Investigators Award.
The Career Development Award provides 200,000 USD per year for 3 to 5 years to young scientists to establish their own lab at a host institute in which they can conduct independent research in the biological sciences.
To date, the Armenise-Harvard Foundation has supported 28 young scientists who are now leading more than 200 researchers in their research teams.
Since their arrival to Italy, the Armenise-Harvard Career Development Awardees have generated more than 580 papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals with a high average citation per paper. They have an average h-index of 21.8 (ranges from 8 to 42).
Besides, they have raised more than €56 M in additional grants, including ten prestigious European Research Council grants and one of only two Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Early Career Scientist Awards granted to Italian scientists in 2012.