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
In 2018, I was awarded a UKRI Rutherford Fund Fellowship, granted by the MRC in alignment with the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform (UKRMP) initiative.
My work, based at the Biomedical Engineering Research Division of the University of Glasgow, is carried out within the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment, a cross-college multidisciplinary initiative of the University, and the Acellular/Smart Materials Hub of the UKRMP.
My current research seeks to engineer microenvironments to harvest stem cell response to viscosity, in particular for the promotion of chondrogenic differentiation for cartilage repair.
My 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, for applications in regenerative medicine, drug testing and understanding disease mechanisms. I'm also interested in protein adsorption, cell adhesion, stem cell differentiation, atomic force microscopy and spectroscopy.
Biography
In 2004 I received my Bachelor and in 2006 my Master degree in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino in Italy, with full marks and honours. I then graduated from the school for young talents Alta Scuola Politecnica in 2007.
Between 2007 and 2010 I pursued a PhD in Biomedical and Biomechanical Engineering through a joint PhD program (Scuola Interpolitecnica) of the three Italian Technical Universities. I then held post-doctoral researcher positions at the Universitat Politècnica de València and at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Spain, focussing my interest on the modulation of cell-protein-material interactions to control cell fate.
In 2013, I moved to the University of Glasgow, where I have been working on material-based strategies to engineer tissue repair and regeneration as a Research Associate in the Microenvironments for Medicine group led by Professor Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez and as a Research Fellow since 2018.
Selected publications
Sprott, M. R., Gallego-Ferrer, G., Dalby, M. J. , Salmeron-Sanchez, M. and Cantini, M. (2019) Functionalisation of PLLA with polymer brushes to trigger the assembly of fibronectin into nanonetworks. Advanced Healthcare Materials, 8(3), 1801469. (doi:10.1002/adhm.201801469) (PMID:30609243)
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)
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)
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)
Grants
- Medical Research Council (UK), UKRI Innovation/Rutherford Fund Fellowship, Engineered microenvironments to harvest stem cell response to viscosity for cartilage repair, MR/S005412/1, 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:
- Haoming Wang (Viscosity in the integrin-growth factor cross-talk, expected 2022)
- 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)
Teaching
Biomechanics 3/M
