“THEcommitment kept. L‘Ebri, the European Institute for Brain Research founded by Nobel prize Rita Levi Montalciniwill be financed with the resources of Ministry of the University and research for one million euros“. So she wrote it minister Anna Maria Bernini on Xputting an “end” to the case of the prestigious center founded in 2002 by neurologist who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine which last December announced its possible closure due to lack of funds.
The Rita Levi Montalcini Institute is a hope for studying diseases such as Alzheimer’s
Ebri funding for 2024 it had not been included in the Budget Law, but Minister Bernini had committed to finding a solution with the institute. And today the announcement of the contribution, but not only: “We are already studying a structural allocation which, unlike in the past, gives a guarantee of continuity to the work of the Institute. Research is a priority of the Government because it represents a fundamental driver of progress and development for our society” added Bernini.
In December 2023 the Institute risked closing its doors, nullifying the international results obtained by researchers «who increase our knowledge of the brain and the mechanisms of many neurological diseases and autism spectrum disorders» the president of the foundation Antonino Cattaneo had underlined.
«The results achieved by Ebri are the basis of future innovative therapies for serious diseases of the brain and eye which today do not have adequate treatments, including Alzheimer’s and other serious neurodegenerative diseases, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, neuropsychiatric diseases, glaucoma and optic neuropathies.”
The scientist’s desire: an Italian center of excellence
The institute has also developed new innovative drugs, thanks also to the use in research projects of “cutting-edge neurotechnologies based on protein engineering, gene therapy, artificial intelligence, optical imaging, multiple electrophysiological recordings”. The funding obtained will be used to continue the research and support the structural costs, implementation and maintenance of the laboratories and equipment. Among the most recent studies, also the one that reveal the different memory mechanisms between men and women.
Rita Levi Montalcini (Getty Images)
Founded by Rita Levi-Montalcini, her collaborator Pietro Calissano and Luigi Amadio, entrepreneur and owner of the Santa Lucia IRCCS Foundation, the EBRI project was born from the scientist’s desire to establish a research center of excellence in Italy and international in scope dedicated to the study of the brain and the pathologies that affect it. Presented in Cernobbio in 2001, it was also supported by another Nobel Prize winner, Renato Dulbecco, and in 2004 it became operational in Rome near Via Ardeatina, where Rita Levi Montalcini loved to wander the corridors. Today it is based at the La Sapienza University of Rome, where there is a large photo of the scientist welcoming the researchers.
In 1952 he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine
Lived to be 102 years old, Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in 1909 in Turino: he had a twin sister, Paola. She was the daughter of a painter and an engineer and a painter: she graduated in Medicine in 1936 in Turin and began working on the study of the nervous system.
Following the racial laws he can no longer continue his research, which continues first in Belgium, then in the United States and Brazil: it is here, in 1952, that identifies the “Nerve Growth Factor” (NGF), sharing the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Stanley Cohen. His life was also told on TV, in one 2020 fiction with Elena Sofia Ricci.
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