Dr. Emanuele Cocucci receives Hypothesis Fund award

Emanuele Cocucci, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology, has recently received an award from the Hypothesis Fund. This fund advances scientific knowledge by supporting early-stage, innovative research that increases our adaptability against systemic risks to the health of people and the planet.

This contribution will aid Dr. Cocucci's project, "Defining the Minimal Machinery for Extracellular Vesicle Biogenesis." This project will examine whether protein crowding on the cell surface is enough to form and release a vesicle, as well as determine what it carries. 

“Ema’s project takes a highly innovative synthetic reconstruction approach to understanding extracellular vesicle (EV) biogenesis with a level of experimental control that has not previously been available for studying EV formation,” said Jeanne Stachowiak, PhD, Hypothesis Fund Scout. “If successful, his work will provide a fundamental mechanistic framework for how EVs are formed, and the resulting design principles could transform EV biology, membrane trafficking, and synthetic cell biology.”