Marco Basile
At the FEBS Advanced Microscopy Course in Amsterdam
Presenting at ICONAN 2024
Hosting the IBEC Symposium 2023
Receiving the 'la Caixa' INPhINIT fellowship

Marco Basile

I study how misfolded proteins get out of the brain — and why, in Alzheimer's disease, they stop.

PhD researcher in biomedicine at the University of Barcelona, in the Molecular Bionics group at IBEC.

See the research

About

Who I am and what I work on.

I am a neuroscience PhD researcher working on neurodegenerative disease, principally Alzheimer's. My question is a transport question: the brain has to clear amyloid-β, the blood–brain barrier does most of that clearing, and in disease the process fails.

What our group has found is that the barrier sorts its cargo by avidity. Molecules that bind LRP1 tightly get held in the endocytic pathway and degraded; molecules that bind at intermediate strength are ferried across in tubular vesicles stabilised by syndapin-2. That sorting rule is something you can design against.

So I build multivalent polymeric nanoparticles that sit at the right point on that curve — as delivery vehicles, and as therapeutic agents in their own right. Which of the two matters more is still open, and it is the part I find most interesting.

Marco Basile

CV

Education and research posts. Full CV (PDF)

Education

PhD in Biomedicine — neuroscience

2022 – present

University of Barcelona, ES

Thesis: elucidating the transport of misfolded proteins across the blood–brain barrier. Supervised by Giuseppe Battaglia and José Antonio del Río.

MSc, Pharmaceutical biotechnology

2019 – 2022

University of Naples Federico II, IT

Pharmacology, pharmaceutical chemistry and technology. Where I first got into nanomedicine and bioinformatics.

BSc, Health biotechnology

2016 – 2019

University of Naples Federico II, IT

Molecular mechanisms of cells, tissues and organisms, and how they go wrong in disease.

Research posts

'la Caixa' Doctoral INPhINIT fellow

October 2022 – present

Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), ES

  • Transport mechanisms of misfolded proteins across the blood–brain barrier.
  • Functionalised nanoparticles as modulators of that barrier.
  • Supervisor: Giuseppe Battaglia.

Erasmus traineeship

April – September 2022

IBEC, ES

  • Built multi-ligand nanoparticles to trigger transcytosis in brain endothelial cells in vitro.

Erasmus+ research placement

September 2021 – January 2022

University of Barcelona & IBEC, ES

  • Self-assembly of PMPC–PDPA copolymers, bottom-up and top-down.
  • Coursework in genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics.
  • Master's thesis (PDF)

Master's internship

2021, five months

University of Naples Federico II, IT

  • Encapsulating nucleic acids in lipid nanoparticles using calcium phosphate cores.
  • Supervisor: Giuseppe De Rosa.

Bachelor's internship

2019, three months

University of Naples Federico II, IT

  • Loading fluorescent probes into hyaluronic-acid-functionalised PLGA nanoparticles.
  • Supervisor: Marco Biondi. Thesis (PDF, Italian)

Work

Papers, conference posters, talks and teaching.

Contact

Barcelona, Spain

Happy to hear from anyone working on barrier biology, protein misfolding or nanoparticle design — and from students looking for a way into the field.