Nunzio Iraci

Nunzio Iraci (NI) is Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Catania. His laboratory has a specific interest in the characterization of intercellular communication mechanisms mediated by extracellular vesicles (e.g., exosomes), and their possible application in the field of nanotechnology. His early studies at the University of Bologna contributed to identify the molecular mechanisms by which the MYC oncogene influences tumor proliferation, in neuroblastoma and leukemia.

NI then moved to the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge (UK), focusing on the study of neural stem cells and their regenerative potential in the context of multiple sclerosis and neuroinflammation. With his work NI contributed to reveal a mechanism of cell-to-cell communication by which stem cells can signal with the microenvironment through extracellular vesicles, both in physiological conditions and in the context of neurodegenerative diseases.

NI returned to Italy with a direct call at UniCT. His laboratory aims at the characterization of exosomes as natural messengers of bioactive molecules in glial-neuronal signaling, in in vitro and in vivo models of neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on nanotechnological development to maximize the repair/regeneration potential of exosomes.

NI has been a speaker at numerous national and international conferences (many of them by invitation), and collaborates with several scientific journals and funding agencies both as editor and reviewer. He is co-inventor of 2 patents (PCT/US2009/063707 and PCT/EP2017/073635) and has 41 publications indexed in the SCOPUS database, including 2 book chapters. NI is first or corresponding author in 17 of these, for a total of 3,086 citations with an h-index of 26.