From the start of Patricia’s PhD she had an idea for a collaboration project to decipher the human aortic valve lipidome and sought LMAI expertise out. Current knowledge suggests that lipid dysmetabolism plays a significant role in the progression of calcific aortic valve disease, the most common valvular heart disease. However, the underlying biochemical disease mechanisms are not well understood. Thus, together with LMAI team, and especially Michele, Patricia started the tedious process of carefully profiling the lipidome of the human aortic valve tissue to describe and quantify molecular lipid composition in details along disease progression axis. This research stay was supported by the German Research Council (SFB 1052/Z3).

Simona Fontana is a PhD student in Molecular Medicine from the Department of Oncology of the University of Torino in Italy. She carries out her research in the Oncological Pharmacology Laboratory headed by Professor Chiara Riganti. Her PhD project is about the application of OMIC techniques to unveiling the mechanisms that can drive chemo-immuno-resistance in non-small cell lung cancer, with the final goal to identify new predictive biomarkers and design molecular/metabolic combination treatments. During this research period in LMAI team, Simona will perfome lipidome analysis to highlight possible alterations in lipid metabolism and so identify targeted signatures in NSCLC cell lines, by applying lipid extraction, MS-based lipidomics and multi-OMICs data integration.

Magali Walravens is a PhD student at the Vanden Berghe Lab, University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her PhD project fits within the scope of improving ferroptosis detection methods specifically in patients with multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS). (Phospho)lipid peroxidation is an inherent part of this pathway and was proven to correlate with disease severity. Therefore, she sought out the help of the LMAI team for their expertise in mass spectrometry-based (epi)lipidomics to study the (epi)lipidome involved in ferroptosis-driven organ injury.

Gabriele Lombardi Bendoula is a Master graduate in Chemical Science from the Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Biotechnology of the University of Perugia in Italy. He carries out his research in DAISY Lab headed by Prof. Laura Goracci and Prof. Gabriele Cruciani. He won an Erasmus Plus Traineeship scholarship to come LMAI. Gabriele aims develop cheminformatics methods to support tracing of lipid metabolism using click chemistry approaches. During his stay with us, Gabriele will focus on the generation of databases of clicked lipid species and the characterization of their MS/MS fragmentation patterns, with the help of Palina Nepachalovich. Gabriele will use this opportunity to increase his knowledge and expertise in mass spectrometry and lipidomics.

Andrea Venturi is a Ph.D. student from the Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Biotechnology of the University of Perugia in Italy. He carries out his research in DAISY Lab, headed by Prof. Gabriele Cruciani. Andrea Ph.D. project is about the search for green alternatives in solvents and methodologies in extraction processes applied to lipidomics. During the period at LMAI group, Andrea will focus on the replacement of chloroform in classical lipid extraction methods, both monophasic and biphasic. Given LMAI experience in lipid extraction, mass spectrometry-based lipidomics, and multi-omics data integration, Andrea will use this opportunity to increase his knowledge and expertise in the research field of lipidomics.

Philipp is a PhD student in the group of Valery Bochkov at University of Graz. He joined LMAI for 2 summer months this year to learn advanced bioinformatic tools for (epi-)lipidomics which he plans to use to study toxic lipid peroxidation products (LPPs) and the mechanisms of their inactivation in human blood.

Špela Koren is a PhD student in Dr. Toni Petan’s group at the Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia. The aim of her research stay in our laboratory is to investigate the hypothesis that lipid droplets, lipid storage organelles present in most mammalian cells, control the trafficking of polyunsaturated fatty acids within the cell and thus modulate membrane lipid peroxidation and the sensitivity of cancer cells to ferroptosis. To achieve this goal, we combined the expertise of Dr. Toni Petan’s team from Slovenia with LMAI expertise in LC-MS/MS and bioinformatics to dig deep into the molecular details of lipid composition and lipid oxidation at the lipidomics and epilipidomics levels.