Health security

Italian-led team discovers cancer’s ‘driving force’

New progress in the personalized treatment of cancer has been made by a group of researchers from Columbia University, led by Italians Antonio Iavarone and Anna Lasorella. “We have discovered the mechanism behind an important genetic alteration that causes a large percentage of cancers, including glioblastoma, the most aggressive and lethal type of brain tumour,” Iavarone explained to the Corriere. “And thanks to this discovery we are testing ‘targeted’ treatments to block their development”.

The results of this research, which Iavarone said had “been going on for years”, were published yesterday in Nature. They “were achieved using a complex series of techniques, such as the analysis of Big Data, involving the study of the genetic sequences of tumours, catalogued by the American project The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)”, for which Iavarone is lead brain tumour researcher. Two researchers from the Università del Sannio in Benevento, Michele Ceccarelli and Stefano Pagnotta, contributed to examining and interpreting the enormous amount of information obtained from the TCGA. “They are two statistical mathematicians, who often spend research periods in our laboratories at Columbia. We also have five other Italians, out of a total of about twenty researchers,” added Iavarone.