27 August 2025: The MmiRAlveRgen project of the Functional Cell Biology laboratory, aimed at promoting the development of therapies for debilitating respiratory diseases, is launched.
The MmiRAlveRgen project, led by Dr Luca Braga, head of the Functional Cell Biology Laboratory at ICGEB in Trieste, has been awarded a grant of €200,000 as part of the “Booster for Life Science – Support for projects to validate innovative ideas and technologies that aim to achieve Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6, 7 or 8, put forward under the Autonomous Region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Cluster Life Sciences and Technological Pol of the High Adriatic.
The project is based on recent discoveries by the Braga Group, which has identified new drug targets for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), over the past year, and that have been widely validated in relevant preclinical models.
MmiRAlveRgen opens new prospects in the development of targeted delivery systems based on lipid nanoparticles, aimed at creating advanced therapies against Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), a rare and severely debilitating respiratory disease for which there are currently no effective treatments capable of regenerating lung tissue.
The laboratory also runs ICGEB’s high-throughput screening facility, which includes a series of robotic systems capable of rapidly testing millions of chemical compounds or biological samples for specific activities, primarily in drug discovery and biological research.
