What an inspiring days in Amsterdam!

I recently had the opportunity to take part in the annual meeting of the NeuroCOV consortium.

It was a valuable chance to reconnect with colleagues, discuss the progress of our work, and reflect together on the next steps for the consortium.

What I appreciated most was the strong spirit of collaboration and the opportunity to meet NeuroCOV peers in person, exchange ideas and strengthen our connections.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to making the meeting such a valuable experience, and especially to Amsterdam UMC for kindly hosting us.

I am very glad to be part of this consortium and look forward to continuing our work together.

Flavio

Our Phd student Lorenzo Brochier recently took part in this year’s OxML Machine Learning School Health & Bio track, which focused on emerging applications of artificial intelligence in biology and healthcare.

The programme covered a broad range of topics, including the translation of AI models from research tools into robust clinical devices, disease-risk prediction and the challenges of causal inference, and the use of foundation models for gene regulation. Other sessions explored AI-assisted integration of MRI and ultrasound before and during surgery, as well as the importance of appropriately handling missing data and addressing sampling bias in health AI.

The school also provided a valuable opportunity for Lorenzo to connect with PhD students from different research fields who apply similar computational methods to diverse biological and clinical problems.

Excited to share that our new preprint is now available on bioRxiv!

This work is the result of Irene Fernandez Rebollo and Alessandro Digilio’s Master’s thesis in the Iorio Lab. 

In this work, we introduce GepiClock, an epigenetic clock trained on cancer methylomes that successfully predicts age in both cancer and normal samples, while outperforming previous clocks in this context.

By applying GepiClock to molecularly profiled cancer cell lines, we identify age-associated genetic and therapeutic vulnerabilities, linking biological age in cancer with gene dependencies and drug responses. Thanks to this work, it is now also possible to study cancer dependency map data through the lens of ageing-related methylation patterns.

You can read the preprint here: A Generalised Epigenetic Clock Reveals Therapeutic Vulnerabilities Linked to Ageing in Cancer Cells

The WOMA Forum in Milan brought together internationally renowned scientists, industry leaders, and innovators from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors to discuss emerging trends in healthcare and life sciences. During the event, our Gianluca Vozza had the opportunity to attend the recording of a podcast featuring Professor Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Prize laureate whose pioneering work on CRISPR genome-editing technology has transformed modern biomedical research. Following the session, he had the pleasure of briefly meeting Professor Doudna during the “meet the speaker” session. For a laboratory whose research focuses on CRISPR-based approaches, the encounter represented a particularly inspiring moment and an opportunity to connect with one of the scientists behind one of the most influential breakthroughs in modern biology.

Last November at Human Technopole researchers in cancer functional genomics and computational biology discussed challenges and future directions in mapping cancer vulnerabilities and building predictive frameworks. 

Link to the conference report now published in FEBS Letters

🔬Looking at 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 leveraging 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗠𝗮𝗽 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝗽𝗮𝗻-𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲, we are expanding 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 highlighting 𝗩𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗨𝗻𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 (𝗩𝗨𝗦) with emerging functional relevance.

🧬 Our study aims to enhance the identification of 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝘃𝘂𝗹𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 and the discovery of 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗲𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 tailored to clinically relevant patient subgroups with unmet treatment needs. 

Many thanks to all the team and especially to Aurora Savino and Athanasios Oikonomou.

Link to the preprint

The weekly lab meeting was spiced up with a fun Secret Santa celebration. Engaging scientific discussions, delightful gifts and great company made for a cheerful break from experiments and coding!

The 2nd European Cancer Dependency Map Symposium, hosted by Francesco (alongside Pedro Beltrao from ETH Zurich, and Evangelia Petsalaki and Isidro Cortés-Ciriano from EMBL-EBI) at Human Technopole, has concluded. Great speakers delivered breakthroughs that advance cancer functional genomics across Europe! 🏛️🧬

Delighted to host Traver Hart (MD Anderson Cancer Center), who delivered an engaging seminar on synthetic lethality at HumanTechnopole. He showed how bridging CRISPR and predictive modeling can advance design and interpretation of genetic interaction screens and inform new therapeutic strategies. 

Kudos to Nevenka Radic, who showcased our work charting the genetic dependencies of drug-resistant cancer cells and won the Best Poster Award! 🎉 

Kudos to our Flavio Passante for winning with his team the REMEDi4ALL Hackathon in Barcellona! Researchers from 10 countries tackled real-world challenges in drug repurposing for rare neurodevelopmental disorders, spanning the whole pipeline from early target discovery to market access.

Our very own Raffaele Iannuzzi successfully defended his PhD Thesis last week. Raf has worked on benchmarking CRISPRdata analytical tool and predictive models leveraging bulk & single cell RNA-seq data. We will definitely miss him. We wish him all the best as new adventures await! Congrats Raf! 🎉

Last week, we had the pleasure of hosting Maximilian Billmann in our Computational Biology Research Centre at Human Technopole. He delivered a fantastic talk exploring how large-scale CRISPR screens and integrative analyses can illuminate the logic of genetic dependencies in human cells.

A big thank you to Max for visiting us and for the great discussions that followed! 👏

Francesco will be speaking at the High-Content CRISPR Screening conference, taking place March 18–19, 2026 in Vienna 🇦🇹

The meeting will bring together experts working at the intersection of CRISPR screening, functional genomics, and drug discovery. 📍 Looking forward to meet you in Vienna!

Today we bid farewell to our postdoctoral researcher Aurora Savino, who is moving on to an exciting new chapter as an independent investigator at the University of Turin. Aurora has been an integral part of the Iorio Lab, contributing with dedication, talent, and a collaborative mindset to a number of key projects over the past years. Her scientific insight and positive energy have left a lasting impact on the group, both scientifically and personally. We are proud to have been part of her journey and wish her all the very best in this new role and beyond. Good luck, Aurora — we’ll be cheering you on!

Today we bid farewell to our postdoctoral researcher Aurora Savino, who is moving on to an exciting new chapter as an independent investigator at the University of Turin. Aurora has been an integral part of the Iorio Lab, contributing with dedication, talent, and a collaborative mindset to a number of key projects over the past years. Her scientific insight and positive energy have left a lasting impact on the group, both scientifically and personally. We are proud to have been part of her journey and wish her all the very best in this new role and beyond. Good luck, Aurora — we’ll be cheering you on!

Kudos to our Flavio Passante for presenting his work on new computational approaches for drug repurposing at the PhD-student Retreat 2024, organized by the SEMM (European School of Molecular Medicine) and for being awarded with the Best Poster Prize. Flavio’s work is carried out within the NEUROCOV, a European consortium that aims to investigate the neurological and neuropsychiatric complications following COVID-19 infections. The aim of Flavio’s doctoral project is to develop a computational framework able to identify promising drug candidates to prevent or ameliorate NeuroCOVID symptoms.