Alessandro Provenzani
Alessandro Provenzani
e-mail:
affiliation: University of Trento, CIBIO
research area(s): Cancer Biology
Course: Biomolecular Sciences
University/Istitution: Università di Trento
Positions:
02/12/2008 to now: Assistant Professor of Applied Biology at the University of Trento

01/01/2008 to now Group leader, Laboratory of Genomic Screening at CIBIO (Centre of Integrative Biology, University of Trento)

23/07/2007 - 23/07/2010 Post Doc fellowship at the University of Trento. Three years grant funded by PAT (provincia autonoma di Trento).

23/01/2007 - 22/07/2007 Post Doc position at the University of Trento

01/05/2003 - 31/12/2006 Senior Scientist at the Fiorgen Foundation, University of Florence

08/01/2001 - 30/03/2001 Visiting fellow at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), Microbiology Department, laboratory of prof. Eltis Lindsay.

01/07/1999 - 27/03/1999 Fellow at the Center of magnetic resonance. Project title: "NMR studies on bacterial metabolism of aromatic compounds"

Main scientific Interest: Regulation of translation in cancer, RNA binding protein as possible drug targets, development of molecular, cellular and high content assays for high throughput drug screening, identification of chemical scaffold by HTP drug screening.

Fellowships and academic activities:

01/09/2009- 31/12/2009 Teaching Responsible for the course in “Biology”, University of Trento,
01/09/2008- 31/12/2008 Teaching assistant for the course in “Biologia Generale”, University of Trento, responsible prof. A.Quattrone

01/09/2007- 31/12/2007 Teaching assistant for the course in “Biology”, University of Trento, responsible prof. A.Quattrone

01/11/2001- 31/12/2006 Tutor for the International Ph.D. course in “Structural Biology”, University of Florence, responsibles prof. Harald Schwalbe, prof. Claudio Luchinat, prof. Lucia Banci, prof. Ivano Bertini

01/08/99-28/02/2000 Teaching assistant and tutor activity for the Course in "General and Inorganic Chemistry", University of Florence, responsible prof. Ivano Bertini.
Education:

01/04/2000-05/05/2003 Ph.D. in Chemistry, at the Centre of magnetic resonance, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.

01/11/1993-29/06/1999 Degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical technologies (C.T.F.), Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Vote: 110/110 summa cum laude
Thesis title: "Intramolecular Hetero Diels-Alder Reaction of ,-Dioxosulfines." (supervisors: Prof. Menichetti, Prof. Capozzi, Organic Department of Chemistry of University of Florence, Florence, Italy).

01/07/99-31/09/99: Socrates-Erasmus European mobility program: attended a three months practical course in organic chemistry at the Chemistry Department of University of Crete, Greece (supervisor prof. Katerinopolous).
The process of drug discovery is, nowadays, based on the use of robotic approaches that allow evaluating many thousands of compounds for novel action in each round of screening. Notwithstanding these great technological improvements, the process of identification of new pharmaceutical leads - and finally of new drugs - is still prone to possibility of a very expensive failure. The application of a more rational approach based on information coming from “omic” sciences is more and more needed. The activity of the Laboratory of Genomic Screening is aimed at the application of microarray to the field of drug screening in cancer research.

Research directions
The research at the Laboratory of Genomic Screening is dealing with the application of modern genomic technologies oriented towards the identification of new pharmacological therapies in cancer pathologies. The Laboratory pursues both application-related studies and fundamental research. Our drug discovery approach is made by a combination of already available medications with the information that can be extracted from gene expression profiles. The main advantage of screening approved medications for novel applications is the benefit that arises from the availability of the information obtained from the original clinical trials: detailed information related to dosing, in vivo pharmacokinetics and toxicity. Several projects are running in the laboratory all of them focused towards the development of molecular assay to be used in the screening process. Particular interest is based on the identification of a network of genes differentially translated under the effect of the genomic and non-genomic action of estrogen in breast cancer cell lines. Molecular assay able to identify drugs that can specifically work on one pathway are under evaluation. More generally the identification of genetic pathways that lead regulatory mechanisms of tumor activity and of the cluster of genes that are deregulated in the pathology are of particular interest. These types of studies are conduced mainly by the help of polysomal profiling and computational technologies. The molecular alterations identified will be used for subsequent ideation of functional assays to be used in the drug screening process
Functional analysis of CDKN2A/p16INK4a 5'-UTR variants predisposing to melanoma. 2010
Bisio A, Nasti S, Jordan JJ, Gargiulo S, Pastorino L, Provenzani A, Quattrone A, Queirolo P, Bianchi-Scarrà G, Ghiorzo P, Inga A. Hum Mol Genet. Apr 15;19(8):1479-91

Provenzani A, Fronza R, Loreni F, Pascale A, Amadio ML, Quattrone A. 2006.
Global alterations in mRNA polysomal recruitment and deregulation of cap-dependent translation in a cell model of colorectal cancer progression to metastasis. Carcinogenesis 27: 1323-1333.

Pascale A, Amadio M, Scapagnini G, Lanni C, Racchi M, Provenzani A, Govoni S, Alkon DL, Quattrone A. 2005.
Neuronal ELAV proteins enhance mRNA stability by a PKC?-dependent pathway. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102: 12065-12070.

Bertini I, Del Bianco C, Gelis I, Katsaros N, Luchinat C, Parigi G, Peana M, Provenzani A, Zoroddu MA. 2004.
Experimentally exploring the conformational space sampled by domain reorientation in calmodulin. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101: 6841-6846.

Cini G, Neri B, Pacini A, Cesati V, Sassoli C, Quattrone S, D'Apolito M, Fazio A, Scapagnini G, Provenzani A, Quattrone A. 2005.
Antiproliferative activity of melatonin by transcriptional inhibition of cyclin D1 expression: a molecular basis for melatonin-induced oncostatic effects. J Pineal Res 39: 12-20.
No projects are available to students for the current accademic year.