Andrea Banfi is a group leader at the Cell and Gene Therapy of the Departments of Biomedicine and Surgery of the University Hospital Basel. The goal of research of his group is to promote vascular growth for tissue repair, combining expertise on mesenchymal progenitor cell biology and vascular biology. The research aims at: 1) elucidating the basic mechanisms governing the growth of blood vessels under therapeutically relevant conditions, and 2) translating these concepts into rational regenerative medicine approaches, to restore blood flow in ischemia (coronary and peripheral artery diseases) and to regenerate vascularized tissues, particularly bone.

The projects, at the interface between fundamental research and clinical translation, rely on the close interaction between basic scientists and clinicians. Core competences of the group are the combination of stem cell therapy and gene therapy, to achieve both vascular growth and tissue regeneration, as well as engineering of controlled microenvironments by factor-decorated smart biomaterials.

Furthermore, taking advantage of a highly controlled cell-based gene delivery platform we developed, we are pursuing a systematic investigation of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate the switch between normal and aberrant vascular growth in vivo, in order to identify novel and more specific molecular targets for therapeutic angiogenesis approaches. Research is funded by Swiss agencies (SNF, SHF) and the European Union (FP7 and H2020).

For detail and recent publications: https://biomedizin.unibas.ch/en/research/research-groups/banfi-lab/