The Generative Brain

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa (molecular modelling and drug discovery, translational pharmacology and analytical chemistry)

The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia is a private foundation in Genoa, set up in 2003, with headquarters at Via Morego and a network of research centres. It is not a prion institute. It enters this atlas because three of its Genoa units supplied the chemistry, the animal pharmacology and the bioanalysis for ARN1468, the only published small molecule aimed at a serpin rather than at the prion protein itself: the Molecular Modeling and Drug Discovery laboratory led by Marco De Vivo ran the structure-based virtual screen and the medicinal chemistry, the Translational Pharmacology group ran the mouse pharmacokinetics that showed the compound did not reach the brain, and the Analytical Chemistry laboratory did the measurement work. The 2022 paper was led by the SISSA prion biology laboratory in Trieste. A second and separate IIT group in Genoa, the CONCEPT laboratory of computational modelling, co-authored the June 2026 review on prion misfolding and druggability with Santiago de Compostela and Trento. No later IIT prion chemistry was found. Information only, not medical advice.

Key facts

  • IIT is a private foundation set up in September 2003; its statute was drafted in 2004 and its Genoa headquarters at Morego opened in 2006, with laboratory activity starting the same year.
  • The institute describes itself as a network of 14 centres and more than 80 research units, with the registered address Via Morego 30, 16163 Genova.
  • The Molecular Modeling and Drug Discovery laboratory in Genoa, principal investigator Marco De Vivo, applies multiscale molecular modelling and simulation together with medicinal chemistry and structural biology to design, synthesise and test compounds, with stated target areas of cancer, neurological disorders and inflammation-related disease. Prion disease is not named on the page.
  • De Vivo is listed as a tenured senior researcher and principal investigator and as Associate Director for Computational Sciences at IIT, based at the CHT@Erzelli centre, with a Bologna doctorate (2000 to 2004) and a postdoctoral period at the University of Pennsylvania (2004 to 2007).
  • Rosalia Bertorelli is listed as a technologist and visiting scientist in Translational Pharmacology at the CCT@Morego centre and is described as coordinator of the Translational Pharmacology Facility, working on preclinical animal models, biodistribution and pharmacokinetics.
  • On the 2022 ARN1468 paper the IIT contributors are Giuseppina La Sala and Marco De Vivo (Molecular Modeling and Drug Discovery), Maria Summa and Rosalia Bertorelli (Translational Pharmacology) and Sine Mandrup Bertozzi (Analytical Chemistry), all in Genoa, alongside the SISSA-led authorship.
  • The IIT role in that paper was the part that ended the project: the virtual screen and chemistry produced the compound, and the mouse pharmacokinetics showed negligible brain exposure, which the authors give as the reason no study in prion-infected mice was run.
  • A separate IIT Genoa group, the CONCEPT laboratory (Computational Modelling of Nanoscale and Biophysical Systems, principal investigator Walter Rocchia, started 2014), is represented by Marta Rigoli on the June 2026 Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery review of prion misfolding and therapeutics, written with CIMUS Santiago de Compostela and CIBIO Trento. The review states that no therapies exist and that strategies aimed at transient folding intermediates remain early or preclinical.
  • Funding named on that 2026 review is the European Regional Development Fund with grant PID2020-117465GB-I00, Telethon GMR24T2072 and the Spanish national research agency, all of which sit with the Spanish and Italian partner groups rather than with IIT; no IIT grant is listed.
  • A Europe PMC search of IIT-affiliated records containing the word prion returned 59 hits, of which only the 2022 compound paper and the 2026 review concern prion disease; the rest use prion-like to describe protein domains or concern other misfolding proteins. The search read here was partial.
  • No publication on ARN1468 or on a serpin inhibitor from this group appears after 2022 in the searches run.

Timeline

  1. 2003Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia set up as a private foundation.
  2. 2006Genoa headquarters at Morego built and scientific activity begins.
  3. 2014The CONCEPT laboratory for computational modelling starts in Genoa.
  4. 2022The ARN1468 paper with SISSA is published online in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (print issue 1 July 2022), carrying the three IIT Genoa laboratories.
  5. 2026The Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery review on prion misfolding and therapeutics is published online with an IIT Genoa co-author (print July 2026).
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