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Professor Annegret Hannawa from USI Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society will conduct one of the sessions of the upcoming Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík, Iceland. The conference is the largest annual international meeting on the Arctic, and over 700 speakers and more than 2000 participants from 60 countries are expected.

The Molecular Oncology research group, led by Prof. Andrea Alimonti at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+), has discovered that prostate cancer cells hijacked the translation machinery to recruit immunosuppressive myeloid cells that aid in evading the immune system.

Researchers from USI reveal the role of mRNA methylation in restraining mast cell functions. Mast cells are cells of the innate immune system with crucial roles in allergy and asthma. Aberrant mast cell responses can lead to highly reduced quality of life and even life-threating conditions, as in the case of anaphylactic reactions.

Smartphones and social media are part of our lives, raising understandable concerns, especially when younger people use them. However, online experiences can be as negative as they are positive. The way to the psychological well-being of adults and adolescents is through the conscious use of such technologies, not their avoidance.

The Experimental Therapeutics group , directed by Prof. Carlo V. Catapano at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+), in collaboration with Prof. Jonathan Hall at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH, Zurich) identified a novel mechanism for the treatment of hepatic disorders of abnormal lipid deposition.

Can a Tweet or a post on Instagram tell us something about our mental health? How meaningful is the relationship between well-being and the use of these platforms? To answer these questions, Marta Fadda, a researcher in bioethics at Università della Svizzera italiana, Oliver Grübner, a health geographer, and Marcus Wolf, a psychologist, at the University of Zurich conducted a series of studies to demonstrate the usefulness of social platforms for mental health research.

A new research project led by Luca Gambardella, professor at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence IDSIA (USI-SUPSI) and Pro-Rector for Innovation and Corporate Relations, has been approved by the  Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) . The study entitled 'Computational methods for integrality gaps analysis' approaches the optimisation of algorithms to deal with complex problems from an innovative and original perspective.

The national jury of the fifth edition of the Boldbrain Startup Challenge awarded first prize to Aliper Therapeutics, a spin-off of the USI-affiliated Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) in Bellinzona. We talked about it with Nicolò Pernigoni, postdoc at the IOR. This is, together with BigOmics Analytics SA and MV BioTherapeutics, the third start-up from the IOR and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) to be awarded a prize by Boldbrain, demonstrating the quality and potential of the research conducted in the two affiliated institutes.

A study conducted by scientists at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated with USI and a member of Bios+) in collaboration with researchers specialized in veterinary oncology at the Universities of Turin and Bologna, identified the most frequent mutations in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), one of the most frequent tumors in both humans and dogs, opening new therapeutic opportunities.

Nearly one-third of young people in Switzerland have little to no interest in the news. Various studies show that daily world events are of secondary importance to them. They rarely use information sources and thus develop limited literacy in dealing with and processing news, which makes them more susceptible/vulnerable to misinformation.

The Lymphoma Genomics group, directed by Prof. Francesco Bertoni at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+), identified a new mechanism behind the resistance to the drug idelalisib, used in the treatment of patients with follicular lymphoma and marginal zone lymphoma.

The Molecular Oncology research group at USI has identified, through the use of bioinformatics and artificial intelligence, a new way to selectively identify and kill a specific type of cells involved in metastasis dissemination. The problem Metastasis, the spreading of tumor cells from a primary site to their progressive outgrowth at a distant organ, is ultimately what kills almost 90% patients with cancer.

When investors shop for mutual funds, they typically focus on performance, which is generally measured by the level of returns (compared to a given benchmark). However, far less is known about value creation, i.e. whether funds, or rather the fund managers, are capable of extracting genuine value from capital markets through their investment decisions.

"Data is the new oil", it has often been said. Indeed, in the digital age data is the fuel that runs the engines of digital media, advanced informatics (AI, machine learning etc.) and, not least, scientific research. Nevertheless, when facing certain highly complex issues, data-driven approaches may not always be the most effective solutions.

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the world's leading medical journal, has entrusted the lymphoma group of the Institute of Oncological Research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+) and the Oncological Institute of Southern Switzerland (IOSI, Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale) with the task of compiling a state-of-the-art report on malignant lymphomas.

USI Pro-Rector for Research Prof. Patrick Gagliardini talks about USI's commitment to reduce, where possible, the use of animal experiments by replacing them with alternative models, bringing concrete examples of approaches to achieve this goal. USI has been actively involved in the Swiss 3R Competence Centre (3RCC) since its founding in 2018 and has recently renewed its commitment.

In the fight against tumours, how the key driver mutations related to disease progression and metastatic spread regulate gene expression to promote ultimately tumor progression and cancer cell adaptation to therapies have remained largely elusive. Using the gene expression fingerprint of cancer cells, researchers at the Istitute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated to USI Università della Svizzera italiana) in Bellinzona have now developed a novel method to track precisely prostate cancer progression in an unprecedented manner.

On 13 February 2022, Swiss citizens will be asked to vote on a popular initiative calling for a complete ban on all animal and human experimentation in Switzerland. The initiative also calls for a ban, from 2024, on all new drugs and medical treatments that have been tested on animals or humans, anywhere in the world.

In 1998, the journal Nature published a seminal letter concluding that a mysterious signal, which had been recently discovered analysing the polarization of sunlight, implies that the solar chromosphere (a very important layer of the solar atmosphere) is practically unmagnetised, in sharp contradiction with common wisdom.