PhD student

MSc

Biosketch

• Bachelor’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering – Politecnico di Milano (Sept 2014 – Sept 2017) 

• Master’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering, “Biomechanics and Biomaterials”, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy (Sept 2017 – April 2020)

• International Erasmus Mobility, Universität Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain (Sept 2018 – Feb 2019) 

• PhD in Biomedical Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland (July 2020 – present)

 Research interests

• NMR Spectroscopy

• Metabolomics

• Cell culture

• Respirometry

Projects

• Determination of Intra- and Extracellular Metabolic Adaptations of 3D Cell Cultures upon Challenges in Real-Time by NMR

• In Real-Time Longitudinal Metabolomic Study of Living Perfused Intact and Deficient Human Skin Fibroblasts

• Methods for oxygen determination in an NMR Bioreactor as a surrogate marker for metabolomic studies in living cell cultures

• Investigation of Bioenergetics and Metabolism in Living Cells: a Comparison Between NMR Bioreactor and Seahorse Analyzer

• Metabolic Profiling of Urine in Healthy Volunteers by 1H-NMR: Determination and Reduction of Within-subject Variability

• Enhancement of Non-Exchangeable NAD+ Proton Signals by Minimizing Water Protons Perturbation by Frequency-Selective NAD+ Excitation

• Optimization of 13C Spectroscopy Methods using an NMR Bioreactor for the Investigation of Real-Time Metabolic Fluxes

• L-Arginine Modulates Fibroblast Metabolism: A Comparison between Controls and Complex I-deficient Cells  

 Funding

Supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Nr. 310030_192691) and a grant from the Batzebär foundation of the Children’s University Hospitals Bern

 Prizes and awards

• Travel Scholarship at the SSIEM 2023 Symposium, Jerusalem, Israel. Poster title: Comprehensive Intra and Extracellular Metabolic Investigation of Perfused Fibroblasts by Real time NMR Allows for Discrimination of Mitochondrial Defects (August 2023)

• Student Travel Award at the Metabolomics 2023 Conference, Niagara Falls, Canada. Talk title: Comprehensive Intra and Extracellular Metabolic Investigation of Perfused Fibroblasts by Real time NMR Allows for Discrimination of Mitochondrial Defects (June 2023)

• Poster Prize Winner at the Mitochondrial Medicine Therapeutic Development Conference 2022, Cambridge, England. Poster title: Intra and Extracellular Metabolic Investigation of Perfused Fibroblasts by Real-time NMR Allows for Better Discrimination of Mitochondrial Defects (November 2022)

• Scholarship for students with particular high merits by the Politecnico di Milano - 2018/2019

• Scholarship to support the international mobility both by the Politecnico and the European Union - 2018/2019

 Selected publications

• Urzì, C., Meyer, C., Nuoffer, J. M., & Vermathen, P. "Methods for Oxygen Determination in an NMR Bioreactor as a Surrogate Marker for Metabolomic Studies in Living Cell Cultures". Analytical chemistry, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.3c02314

• Urzì C., Hertig D., Meyer C., Maddah S. Nuoffer J.M., Vermathen P., “Determination of Intra- and Extracellular Metabolic Adaptations of 3D Cell Cultures upon Challenges in Real-Time by NMR”, Int. J. Mol. Sci., 2022. https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/23/12/6555/htm