Every moment, the molecules circulating in our body tell the story of our health: how a drug is being absorbed, how a tumour is responding to therapy, how an infection is progressing.
Yet most clinical tests still read that story one page at a time: a blood draw, a wait, a single number from a centralized laboratory.
Our group works to change this paradigm.
Taking inspiration from the way living systems sense their cellular environment, we design DNA-based molecular devices that recognize a specific target and instantly convert that binding event into a measurable electrochemical or optical signal, with no washing steps, no added reagents, and no sample preparation.
The result is a new generation of sensors that work directly in whole blood, serum and saliva, inside living organisms, and in miniaturized devices. This could open the door to advanced therapies dosed on each patient’s real needs and early diagnoses delivered in minutes instead of days.
WHO WE ARE
The Translational Chemistry Lab is a highly interdisciplinary research group based in the Department of Chemical Science and Technologies at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, led by Prof. Andrea Idili.
Our name is our mission: to translate the elegant chemistry of life into technologies that reach the clinic. Billions of years of evolution have produced molecular machines that sense, switch and respond with extraordinary precision.
We study these mechanisms, re-engineer them into synthetic DNA-based devices, and carry them along the entire journey from fundamental design, to working sensor, to validation in realistic clinical scenarios.
This translational arc, from the chemistry bench to the body, defines everything we do. It is why our sensors are designed from day one to work in the messy, complex environments of real biological samples, and why we collaborate closely with clinicians, engineers and industrial partners across Europe.