Scientific collaboration between Prof. Claudio Franceschi, Department of Experimental Pathology at University of Bologna and Prof. Ana Maria Caetano de Faria, Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
- Study of immunological and genetic parameters as well as the microbiota screening in healthy elderly leaving in Italy and in Brazil
- The aim will be to establish at which level biological parameters found in Italian centenarians and already described by Franceschi group as biomarkers of healthy aging, will be similar to the ones observed in a population with different genetic background and environmental influences (culture, nutrition, microbiota)
- This will be a pioneer study since comparative studies on healthy aging in different populations have not been conducted so far
Forthcoming exchange visit and events
- The new ongoing collaboration between the two Universities was definitively established and a specific meeting was held to better define the objectives of the new project on "Population Immunology" together with the role of each team.
In the meantime a meeting between the UniBo researchers and Prof. Denise Carmona Cara Machado, who is the international relations advisor for exchange programs of UFMG, was organized in order to start discussing the organization of master courses with a double title between the two Universities.
Past exchange visit
- December 2012
As planned, the 1st Workshop on Healthy Aging was held in Belo Horizonte, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. This workshop was organized by Prof. Ana Maria Caetano de Faria and Prof Olindo Assis Martins Filho (Centro de Pesquisas Rene Rachou, Fundação Osvaldo Cruz).
Four speakers out of 16 were Italians and all from Alma Mater Studiorum, i.e. Prof. Claudio Franceschi, Dr Stefano Salvioli and Dr. Miriam Capri (Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine) together with Prof Patrizia Brigidi (Department of Pharmaceutic Science). Franceschis’ team pointed out the key role of the model to investigate healthy ageing, such as centenarians who escaped or postponed all the major age-related diseases and new discoveries on epigenetic contribution to ageing or longevity phenotype. On the other side, Prof Patrizia Brigidi highlighted the role of microbiota on human ageing and the new perspective of metagenomics which investigates the interaction of the two genomes: the former from human and the latter from microbiota that is thousand times bigger in terms of coding genes.
- From September 2011 to February 2012
Prof. Ana Maria C. Faria spent this period in Bologna, at Unibo discussing and writing a collaborative project that was submitted to Brazilian agencies for financial support. The experimental part of the study started in August 2012 in Brazil, with the enrollment of healthy individuals at various age groups
- September 2012
Prof. Ana Maria C. Faria and Prof. Jose Maria Mombach (from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Santa Maria, Brazil) will apply for a fellowship to the Programme Ciências sem Fronteiras to bring Prof. Gastone Castellani (Department of Physics, Unibo) as a visiting professor for one-month visits during three years. Their collaborative project is on the area of bioinformatics and system biology applied to the study of senescence.