(ANSA) - BARI, 18 JAN - "They interviewed me after ringing the bell and asked me what it means. I gave the example of Michelangelo, who said that in the piece of stone he already had the work of art, yes it was about removing the excess matter. Well, today we have removed an excess part, but the work of art will reach millions of people who have to fight against obesity and other diseases of the intestinal tract. " Speaking is Alessandro Sannino, professor of the University of Salento, whose pill against obesity, produced by the Salento startup Gelesis of which he is founder, was approved by the FDA in 2019, from 2021 on the market in the USA - in Europe it will arrive in 2023 - and since Friday it has been traded on the markets. "This morning we did the opening,ringing the bell on the Wall Street Stock Exchange "he tells ANSA from New York, still excited.
The start-up that gave life to Sannino's research, Gelesis, has an office in Calimera, in the province of Lecce, where production, research and development is carried out, and another in Boston where clinical studies and part of finance.
Sannino, a researcher at the University of Naples with a postdoc at MIT in Boston, created this pill made of a "superabsorbent material - he explains -, the only one in the world entirely ingestible based on cellulose derivatives, patented with my Ph.D. researched and developed by the Gelesis team ".
"That of Alessandro and Gelesis is a story of our land - comments the president of the Apulian Regional Council, Loredana Capone on social networks -, to him and to the many researchers, we owe one of the most effective treatments against one of the ills of the century. Thanks Alessandro, good guys, you are the pride and inspiration of Puglia ".
(HANDLE).
