Barbara
School & Work (with links to Wikipedia
)
I liked studying since I was a child in the primary school in Bozzoreda (Pregassona, Lugano). I attended the middle school in Viganello, where I met Andre and I was always competeting with him about the best marks. Then I attended the classic high school in Lugano, without any idea about what to do in my life. I really liked several subjects: maths, italian, latin, science, but I could not choose! Literature seemed to be without too many perspectives, so I jumped into science: I started dreaming about saving the world with some brilliant discovery! So I studied Biochemistry at the ETH Zurich. The first year was tough: attending lectures in german is not easy at all. The following years were somehow less difficult and finally I liked Zurich and I stayed longer there for my PhD.
In 2001 I began my work with lentiviral vectors in the field of
gene therapy.
My work was aimed at modifying human cells in vitro to obtain the constitutive or regulated expression of desired recombinant
genes,
Almost all my studies have been performed in vitro, even though the final purpose of gene therapy is the correction of "wrong" genes or the introduction of missing genes in unhealthy cells to treat genetic diseases like
cystic fibrosis,
muscolar distrophy,
hemophilia and many other diseases. During my study I've optimized the production of high-perfomance lentiviral particles;
I've developed flexible vectors compatible with the existing expression technologies, and I've introduced new regulation systems (for fine gene regulation in vitro and in vivo) in the produced lentiviral particles. Of course if you like to know more about my work you can give a look at my publications.
After the PhD (actually a nice time, but with a terrible boss) I worked for four months as a PostDoc in the Materials Department of ETH and then I got a job position at Roche Glycart. It's a company which develops and produces antitumoral antibodies. By working there I got the possibility to enter into the pharma industry and I got to know a lot of smart people. As a part of the cellular biology group, my duty had been the development of new analytical methods and testing of the antibodies
Since June 2010 I have been working at Humabs, which is a small spin-off of the IRB institute in Bellinzona (Switzerland). The company is active in the reseach of antiviral antibodies. A rather new field, which I find very interesting and I am learning many new things.
My free time
Besides school and work I've always been busy with other stuff. Well, actually not always. As a child I used to be so lazy that my mom decided it was time for me to do some sport and made me join the lugano athletics team (SAL) when I was 10.
Slowly I learned to love athletics, especially the 100m sprint. I still believe that the nicest sport emotion is starting from the blocks of a 100m run, or run with full throttle on the track bend with the spikes. I had wonderful emotions doing athletics, and met many friends. However, when I started the university I had too little time to train enough to make competitions. Now I run longer
distances all year long, so that during may I can run for the SOLA.
I also like biking...I used to go with a mountain bike, but now I have a wonderful race bike!! It's really something special: sometimes you get the impression it goes without any effort (ok, actually when I see Andre overcoming me easily I change my mind).
I also go hiking, which I learned to do during my summer holydays in Valmalenco, when I was trekking through the alps with my parents, uncles and cousins. Now I share my passion with Andrea, which brought me to Dolomiti. Together we discovered part of the Ticino mountains and of the rest of the Switzerland. Have a look at the
pictures!
Finally, since I cannot eat the wonderful dishes of my mom, I started cooking. I like cooking pastas, risottis, pizzoccheri, vegetables. But I also start learning how to prepare meat dishes (fish and desserts are Andrea's specialties).