Registration now open for the "Vaccinology" and "Advances in Stem Cell Biology" MOOCs

The Department of Education is launching two new MOOCs hosted on the FUN platform. Sign up now!

Advances in Stem Cell Biology

Stem cells have the spectacular ability to restore the function of damaged tissues, providing major opportunities for fundamental studies on organogenesis, regeneration, diseases, and ageing. In spite of intense research in this field, many unanswered questions remain regarding stem cell regulation and function.

The Advances in Stem Cell Biology MOOC was created to provide an overview of stem cell biology, the properties of stem cells and their potential in directing organogenesis and regeneration in different organisms, and how they can be exploited for therapeutic purposes.
During this MOOC you will learn about the characteristics and properties of stem cells, along with the latest discoveries in the field from general concepts to different categories of stem cells, and how they participate in organogenesis in the organism - and in vitro.

Vaccinology

In spite of the success of vaccination in preventing disease and its cost-effectiveness, several challenges remain such as increasing the diversity of the target populations by developing vaccines efficient in pregnant women who will protect their babies at early life, and in the elderly displaying a less efficient immune system to be primed. Besides preventing infectious diseases, a few examples of already available vaccines preventing virus-induced cancers, such as liver cancer due to the hepatitis B virus or cervical cancers due to papilloma viruses, pave the way for further development of anti-cancer vaccines. Recent advances in technology to identify the key antigens to induce efficient protective immunity and large-scale analysis of human immune responses offer to revisit the future of vaccine development in a more global health perspective, taking also into consideration the implementation of new sustainable models for the developing world. This course aims at covering all these aspects to give an overview of the discipline.