Dr Marco Cantini
- MRC/UKRI Rutherford Fund Fellow (Biomedical Engineering)
telephone: 01413305242
email: Marco.Cantini@glasgow.ac.uk
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https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0326-1508Research interests
Marco Cantini is a Research Fellow in the Biomedical Engineering Research Division of the University of Glasgow. He got a Bachelor (2004) and a Master degree (2006) in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino in Italy, with full marks and honours, and he graduated from the school for young talents Alta Scuola Politecnica (2007). Marco then pursued a PhD in Biomedical and Biomechanical Engineering through a joint PhD program (Scuola Interpolitecnica) of the three Italian Technical Universities (2007-2010). Afterwards, he held post-doctoral researcher positions at the Universitat Politècnica de València and at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Spain, focussing his interest on the modulation of cell-protein-material interactions to control cell fate. In 2013, he moved to the University of Glasgow, where he has been working on material-based strategies to engineer tissue repair and regeneration, in the Microenvironments for Medicine group led by Professor Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez.
In 2018, Marco has been awarded a UKRI Rutherford Fund Fellowship, granted by the MRC in alignment with the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform (UKRMP) initiative. This work, carried out at the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment of the University of Glasgow and within the Acellular/Smart Materials Hub of the UKRMP, seeks to engineer microenvironments to harvest stem cell response to viscosity for the promotion of cartilage repair. Marco’s research interests include the design of biointerfaces and microenvironments to simulate the spatio-temporal cues of the extracellular matrix in both physiological and pathological conditions, protein adsorption, cell adhesion, and stem cell differentiation.
Selected publications
Bennett, M., Cantini, M. , Reboud, J. , Cooper, J. M. , Roca-Cusachs, P. and Salmeron-Sanchez, M. (2018) Molecular clutch drives cell response to surface viscosity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(6), pp. 1192-1197. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1710653115) (PMID:29358406)
Cantini, M. , Gomide, K., Moulisova, V., González-García, C. and Salmerón-Sánchez, M. (2017) Vitronectin as a micromanager of cell response in material-driven fibronectin nanonetworks. Advanced Biosystems, 1(9), 1700047. (doi:10.1002/adbi.201700047) (PMID:29497701) (PMCID:PMC5822048)
Llopis-Hernández, V., Cantini, M. , González-García, C., Cheng, Z. A., Yang, J., Tsimbouri, P. M., García, A. J., Dalby, M. J. and Salmerón-Sánchez, M. (2016) Material-driven fibronectin assembly for high-efficiency presentation of growth factors. Science Advances, 2(8), e1600188. (doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600188) (PMID:27574702) (PMCID:PMC5001810)
Ngandu Mpoyi, E., Cantini, M. , Reynolds, P. M., Gadegaard, N. , Dalby, M. J. and Salmerón-Sánchez, M. (2016) Protein adsorption as a key mediator in the nanotopographical control of cell behavior. ACS Nano, 10(7), pp. 6638-6647. (doi:10.1021/acsnano.6b01649) (PMID:27391047) (PMCID:PMC4980054)
Grants
- Medical Research Council (UK), UKRI Innovation/Rutherford Fund Fellowship, Engineered microenvironments to harvest stem cell response to viscosity for cartilage repair, 2018-2021, £600k
- Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (Italy), Doctoral Scolarship, Design of a dynamic culture system for the in vitro mimicry of the bone marrow microenvironment, 2007-2009, €45k
Supervision
Co-supervision of PhD candidates:
- Eva Barcelona Estaje (Engineering surface mobility to control stem cell differentiation, expected 2021)
- Vassilis Papalazarou (Bioengineering microenvironments for pancreatic cancer cell invasion, expected 2019)
- Mark Sprott (Synergistic microenvironments to control stem cell fate, expected 2019)
- Mark Bennett (Mobility dependent cellular behaviour on supported lipid bilayers, 2014-2018)
- Elie Ngandu Mpoyi (Engineering biointerfaces to reveal collagen IV disease mechanisms, 2014-2017)
- Frankie Vanterpool (Deconstructing the tumour microenvironment: the role of fibronectin, 2013-2017)
- Eleni Grigoriou (Graded organisation of fibronectin to tune cell behaviour, 2013-2017)
- Fatma Bathawab (Engineering surface mobility to direct stem cell fate, 2013-2017)
