Ilaria MOSCA
Curriculum vitae
Bachelor’s degree: Physics
Master’s degree: Condensed Matter Physics
(pdf - 320 Ki)Illaria Mosca | InnovaXN PhD student | Video portrait #2
Ilaria Mosca is working on the microscopic dynamic properties of antibody solutions project. This project sees collaboration between the ILL, Lonza and the University of Tubingen.
The video dives into the journey of Ilaria Mosca, a PhD student at the ILL, who is researching the microscopic properties of liquid pharmaceutical formulations for subcutaneous injections.
Her goal is to understand how proteins aggregate in these formulations and find ways to tune their interactions, making medication delivery less painful for patients.
As a part of her PhD, she spent time at pharmaceutical company Lonza, gaining insights into more applied science in the industry's research and development departments. With her enthusiastic involvement in her ILL group, working on proposals and conducting experiments, Ilaria aspires to continue in the field of science and aims to inspire future generations..
PhD Thesis with Tilo Seydel on IN16B
InnovaXN is an EU-funded project that aims to bridge the gap between research and industry, by creating a doctoral training network linking EU world-class research facilities, academia and the needs of EU industry.
Microscopic dynamic properties of monoclonal antibody solutions
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are particularly relevant for therapeutics due to their high specificity and versatility and mAb-based drugs are hence used to treat numerous diseases. The increased patient compliance of self-administration motivates the formulation of products for subcutaneous (SC) administration. The challenge associated with is to formulate highly concentrated antibody solutions to achieve a significant therapeutic effect, while limiting their viscosity and preserving their physico-chemical stability. Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are in fact the root cause of several potential problems concerning the stability, manufacturability and delivery of a drug product. The understanding of macroscopic viscosity requires an in-depth knowledge on protein diffusion, PPI and self-association/aggregation. The aim of the project is to study the self-diffusion of different therapeutic mAbs in aqueous solution through quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) and neutron spin-echo (NSE), while probing PPIs via small angle neutron/X-ray scattering (SANS/SAXS). Complementary information is provided by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and viscometry measurements.
 | This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 847439. |  |