The scientific autumn begins with a positive news: Gabriele Ciceri, neurobiologist from Bergamo, winner of the prestigious Career Development Award from the Giovanni Armenise Harvard Foundation, will lead a new laboratory at the San Raffaele-Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan (SR-Tiget), thanks to $1 million in funding. Ciceri’s team will study neuronal cells and the mechanisms that lead to their full maturation, a process that can take many years in the human brain.

Gabriele Ciceri’s career path began in Italy and continued in Spain, at the Institute of Neurosciences of Alicante CSIC-UMH, and in the United States, at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he worked to understand the prolonged development of human nerve cells and to develop new technologies based on stem cells. This new step in his professional journey places him at the head of the Armenise-Harvard laboratory of “Stem Cells and Timing of Neuronal Developmental in Health and Disease” at SR-Tiget, the joint venture between the Telethon Foundation and the IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital, to take on a challenge as demanding as it is ambitious.

One of Ciceri’s research goals is to develop an innovative experimental platform based on stem cells that allows the investigation of the mechanisms underlying neurological diseases and the definition of therapeutic strategies, in synergy with the solid expertise of SR-Tiget and San Raffaele Hospital in gene and cell therapy for genetic diseases and tumors.

“We know very little about the maturation of the human brain, except that compared to most other species, it develops more slowly. However, not all neuronal cells and brain regions mature at the same pace: some are fast, while others take many years or even decades to reach full functionality. This coordination in the timelines of maturation is crucial, as it allows different types of nerve cells to communicate at the right time and to work together, ensuring that the human brain is built with precision to acquire specialized functions. In my lab, we aim to reproduce this process starting from stem cells and to engineer them to modulate their timing. It is a truly complex challenge: no one has yet achieved to generate fully mature human nerve cells in the lab.” – says Gabriele Ciceri, winner of the Armenise-Harvard CDA –
“Understanding the mechanisms, including epigenetic ones, that coordinate the timing of maturation between different types of nerve cells and brain areas is a knowledge gap that must be filled. Such insights could shed light on how alterations in maturation trajectories contribute to neurodevelopmental diseases, which affect the growing brain, and neurodegenerative diseases, which manifest in adulthood. And perhaps, one day, they may help us prevent or treat them. I am honored to receive this prestigious recognition from the Armenise Harvard Foundation, which will allow me to enthusiastically tackle this new challenge.”

Professor Gianvito Martino, Scientific Director of the IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital and Pro-Rector for Research and Third Mission at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, adds:
“We are very pleased about Gabriele Ciceri’s arrival at San Raffaele, an important step both for him and for our scientific community. His research, focused on the biological characteristics of brain stem cells, not only addresses one of the most fascinating and least understood aspects of biology, but also represents a necessary pathway for translational medicine, of which we are among the main international players, translating laboratory discoveries into innovative treatments. Our hope is that Gabriele, with this line of research, integrated into the multidisciplinary and innovative context of our Institute, can help strengthen San Raffaele’s mission: transforming knowledge into concrete therapeutic opportunities for patients.”

Professor Luigi Naldini, Director of SR-Tiget and Full Professor of Histology at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, continues:
“The arrival of Gabriele Ciceri is a crucial step in our Institute’s strategy. We want to open a new field of investigation into the mechanisms of brain development and the genetic alterations that compromise it, using innovative study models that reproduce the early stages of development in vitro and advanced technologies that track the spatio-temporal evolution of gene expression in different cell populations. The goal will be to discover the molecular mechanisms underlying these diseases and lay the groundwork for future therapeutic interventions.”

Elisabetta Vitali, Executive Director of the Giovanni Armenise Harvard Foundation, concludes:
“We are delighted to welcome Gabriele, who today joins the more than 30 winners of our Career Development Award. In over twenty years, through this purely merit-based program, we have helped bring high-caliber scientists back to Italy, who continue to demonstrate the excellence of science in our country.”

Published on: 23/09/2025