MANCINI NICASIO

My research interests have always been focused on the following main topics: (i) the molecular dissection of the human humoral immune response during infectious diseases by the selection and the characterization of broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies; (ii) the development and clinical validation of novel diagnostic methods for bacterial and mycotic infections (iii) the development and clinical validation of novel diagnostic methods and flow-charts for the microbiological diagnosis of sepsis. As far as the first topic is concerned, we described, in a couple of cases for the first times, a plethora of broadly neutralizing fully human monoclonal antibodies directed against different human pathogens, including hepatitis C virus, influenza viruses, JC virus and herpes simplex viruses. Our expertise on monoclonal antibodies led us to hypothesize possible alternative use of this molecules, such as their use as Fab fragments in the generation of chimeric antigen receptor-redirected T cells. In the clinical microbiology field, we published several papers investigating the role of immunological markers and molecular biology techniques in the design of novel clinical flow charts for speeding up microbiological diagnosis, especially in the field of sepsis in at-risk categories such as solid-organ tarnsplant and oncohematological patients. I am actually coordinating a large multicentre trial on this topic in SOT patients (SEPSOT-CODE) which have enrolled 379 patients.