Vescovi, Angelo

ANGELO VESCOVI, BORN in 1962, is an internationally renowned Italian investigator in the field of stem cell research. His main research interests concern the development of neural stem cell isolation, expansion and differentiation protocols in order to understand the role of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental signals guiding stem cells to acquire a complete differentiation. Vescovi earned his degree in biology from the University of Milan in 1987 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Calgary Pathology Department from 1991 to 1992, devoting his attention toward the role of growth factors in neural stem cells proliferation and the differentiation processes.

[Page 606]During the 1990s, Vescovi was employed at the National Neurological Institute “Carlo Besta” in Milan, and he continued his collaboration with the University of Calgary, where he works as the director of in vitro laboratory at Neurosphere, Limited. During this time, Vescovi's research group played a major role in the comprehension of neural stem cell physiology: the isolation of stem cells from adult mammalian brains. Vescovi's group participated in collaboration with other researchers and their findings caused a total reassessment of the accepted scientific dogma stating that the central nervous system could not generate new cells during the adult lifetime. Some selected brain areas, like the subventricular zone, are endowed of a peculiar microenvironment which allows a particular subtype of astroglial cells to behave as neural stem cells. When isolated and expanded ex vivo, neural stem cells proliferate forming globular agglomerates called neurospheres: these structures are composed of progressively differentiating cells, whose fate can be governed by administering different kinds of growth factors.

In 1999, Vescovi and his colleagues demonstrated that neural stem cells may undergo trans—differentiation, which means that if neural stem cells are manipulated with an appropriate pattern of internal and external signals, they do not just differentiate into neurons, astrocytes, or oli—godendrocytes as it was previously thought, but their wide differentiation potential allows them to produce cells belonging to other germ layers, such as hematopoietic or muscular cells. Another goal of Vescovi's research is to study the possibility of human or murine stem cell transplantation into animal models suffering from different neurological disorders.

The possibility of treating neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or spinal cord injuries with stem cell transplant is one of the most promising future application of neural stem cell research, even though the procedures involved in stem cell graft remain complex and still needing of further investigation in order to be available for treatment. Vescovi has been personally involved in this field as supervisor of the Italian Ministry of Health project regarding neural stem cells and gene therapy for Alzheimer's disease for 2000–02. In 2003, together with Gianvito Martino, Vescovi published an interesting paper reporting the beneficial effects of adult neurosphere injection in a multiple sclerosis mouse model. A clinical and neurophysiological benefit was obtained in transplanted mice, where grafted stem cells were proven to reduce demyelination and axonal loss.

Regenerative medicine purposes, aiming to replace lost or diseased cells into injured tissues with stem cell transplant, are not the sole application of Vescovi's findings. The continuous stem cell differentiation process which involves the brain all through its life may play a key role in brain tumor pathogenesis also: neural stem cells could be the origin of central nervous system (CNS) neoplasms. Although the relationship between normal neural stem cells and CNS tumor cells is still debated, the finding of brain tumor stem cells (BTSCs), a small tumor cell fraction that is supposed to sustain tumor growth, draws an interesting parallel between normal neurogenesis and brain tumori—genesis and will probably lead to a deeper knowledge of both these subjects.

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