Riccardo Biavasco

Born and raised in Milan, Italy, Riccardo attended the San Raffaele University, where in 2011 he obtained my Bachelor degree in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnologies discussing a thesis on the development of gene therapy for β-thalassemia. The previous year, the results from the first treatment of a thalassemic patient with gene therapy were published, and it was an exciting time to get exposed to such innovative therapeutic option. He attended the same University for his Masters degree in Cellular and Molecular Biotechnologies, where he graduated in 2013 with a thesis on the characterization of a rare myeloid inflammatory neoplasm, Erdheim-Chester disease. In 2018, Riccardo obtained a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology working at the Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, where he designed and generated a humanized mouse model for myeloid inflammatory neoplasms and characterized the effects of aberrant cellular senescence in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells as the pathogenic mechanism for this group of diseases. After the conclusion of his PhD in 2019, he joined bluebird bio analytical development group, where he is applying his expertise in gene therapy and hematopoietic stem cell biology to the development of a treatment for patients with genetic disorders. The focus of Riccardo's job at bluebird bio is to coordinate the development of characterization assays for hematopoietic stem cell drug products and to author the relevant sections in filing documents and official communications with regulatory agencies. The characterization assays that they are working on include transduction efficiency measures, drug product phenotyping, and functional characterization of cell health, proliferation, and differentiation potential.