Translational Medicine and Biotechnologies 1

The course aims to apply a multidisciplinary approach to human health problems to transfer new findings from the basicsciences to clinical practice. The purpose of the course is to train students to familiarize themselves with methods, using an interdisciplinary approach, of biotechnology research with an impact on Human Health.

BLOCK 1: BIOTECHNOLOGY APPROACHES IN TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE
At the end of this course, the student will acquire knowledge on different biotechnological techniques used in both clinics and biomedical translational research.
BLOCK 2: CLINICAL BIOCHEMISTRY
At the end of the course, students will learn the pivotal role and limits of laboratory tests in preventing diseases, defining diagnoses, and establishing and monitoring treatments. Students will know when to prescribe and how to interpret some common laboratory biochemical profiles.
BLOCK 3: DIAGNOSTIC MICROBIOLOGY
At the end of the course, students will learn the methodologies to be employed for the main microbiological investigations; when prescribe microbiological investigations; how to interpret some common laboratory microbiological profiles.
BLOCK 4: HEALTH INFORMATICS
1. Recognise real-word scenarios where statistical and automatic learning tools can provide advantages for the analysis.
2. Recognise the difference between descriptive and predictive analysis.
3. Identify proper methods suited for specific research questions.
4. Compute statistical measures, and implement simple statistical methods and prediction models.
5. Interpret the results of the statistical analysis/models respect to the input data and the modelling assumptions.
6. Identify and properly communicate results of the statistical analysis.
BLOCK 5: BASIC PRINCIPLES OF NGS AND SINGLE CELL ANALYSIS
Students will be able to:
1. Describe the principles and basic concepts of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies.
2. Understand and interpret biomedical research findings derived from NGS and single-cell approaches, including single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq).
3. Understand the importance of experimental design considerations in NGS and single-cell studies to address specific questions in biological research and clinical settings.