Ascolta

The PhD course in Molecular and Biomolecular Sciences includes 4 curricula:

- Cell Biology

- Chemical Sciences

- Pharmaceutical Sciences

- Technologies of Biologically Active Substances 

Coordinator: prof. Patrizia Diana

General Aspects

The primary objective of the doctoral training courses is the acquisition of skills required to carry on high quality research activities at universities, public or private companies. For this purpose, students are trained, through continuous experimental researches and a proper specialist trail, to obtain the highest degree of expertise, and to develop self-organizing ability for researches in an international competitive context.

This PhD Course has a profund cultural tradition based on the contribution of important scientists such as Cannizzaro, Paternò, Oddo and Monroy. Over the years, it has grown while maintaining a standard of excellence in science and culture.

The educational goals are pursued by offering the chance to play full-time researches on modern themes of great interest in theoretical, technological, environmental, biomedical, and molecular-mechanistical fields. High quality equipped laboratories can be found in the STEBICEF Department.

The PhD program will also take advantage of the collaboration with institutions and organizations of national and international research in the context of agreements already entered into by the University of Palermo and others that may be activated in view of an ever-increasing development of chemical, biological, pharmaceutical and technological research in all its aspects. This aggregation has over the years showed significant synergistic effects especially with regard to the inter-departmental collaboration, completeness, scientific importance, and breadth of research carried out.

In the past few years, also the Institute of Nanostructured Materials of the National Research Council of Palermo (ISMN-CNR) has contributed to the research of the PhD Program.

The close collaboration between the different curricula of the PhD in Molecular and Biomolecular Sciences allows the development of the educational objectives through joint seminars reaching a broader level of preparation of the PhD students.

Research topics:

• Studies on  biologically active substances, nutraceuticals, radiopharmaceuticals.
• Preparation and characterization of innovative polymer based Drug Delivery Systems .
• Characterization of new synthetic and natural products for biotechnological, environmental, cultural heritage, food and industrial applications.
• Structural and dynamic properties of supramolecular aggregates.
• Molecular studies on function and mechanisms regulating biolological processes (autophagy, apoptosis, embryogenesis, prokaryotic and eukaryotic biosynthetic pathways, etc. ).