History/Background
Prof. Yuri Volkov received his MD from I.M. Sechenov Moscow State Medical University and subsequently a PhD in biomedical sciences at the Institute of Immunology, Moscow. He has been working at the Department of Clinical Medicine, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) since 1995 and he is currently Professor and Chair of Molecular and Translational Medicine at the School of Medicine, TCD and Principal Investigator at the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute (TTMI). His research interests include nanomedicine and biomedical applications of nanotechnologies, molecular mechanisms of immune system functioning in health and disease, cell adhesion and migration in inflammation and cancer, intracellular signalling and cytoskeletal dynamics, advanced cell and molecular imaging. Within the Advanced Materials for BioEngineering Research Centre (AMBER) at TCD his group is pursuing the applications of nanomaterials for advanced research and medical diagnostics and assessment of environmental, health and safety impact of emerging nanomaterials.
Nanomedicine as a wide-spanning interdisciplinary research theme within the TTMI focuses on fundamental aspects of nanoparticle interactions with living cells and organisms, key questions in nanotoxicology and nanopharmacology with a strong drive towards nanomedicine products development, translation and pre-clinical validation. It is supported by a fully established infrastructure enabling to perform advanced studies into nanomaterials characterisation and functionalization and characterisation based on particle tracking analysis approach (NTA), spectral and high content cell imaging and analysis (HCSA), confocal microscopy, atomic force microscopy system for biological liquid phase studies integrated with Raman spectroscope, as well as high throughput transfection, micromanipulation and microinjection facilities.
The researchers of the Nanomedicine group within TTMI (Prof. Yuri Volkov and Prof. Adriele Prina-Mello) over the recent years have secured over 25M EU funding under the FP7 and H2020 programmes. Prof. Volkov has coordinated a large scale EU FP-7 funded Consortium “NAMDIATREAM” awarded the prize for the best EU project at the EuroNanoForum-2015, which united the expertise of 22 European academic, research, clinical and industrial partners towards the development of nanotechnological toolkits for early diagnostics and treatment monitoring of major types of malignant diseases. He was also a Lead TCD partner for EU FP-7 Large scale project “MULTIFUN” and “Celtic Alliance for Nanohealth” Ireland-Wales INTERREG Consortium and currently he is the Lead TCD investigator on the project "NoCanTher" (H2020-NMP-2015-685795), focused on nanomedicine upscaling for early clinical phases of multimodal cancer therapy.