un constant commitment to research, many goals achieved, the lives of many patients changed for the better: twenty years after birth, Umberto Veronesi Foundation continues to be a point of reference in the fight against cancer and today the fruits of many battles fought in the past are being reaped, while the premises are being sown for tomorrow’s successes.
With a special look at women’s health and well-being, which has always been at the center of many of the Foundation’s projects. One of the largest, not surprisingly, is the pink project right from the name, “PINK is good”dedicated to female cancers: 12 years after its launch, there are now more than 700 women who have taken part, training to run a half marathon after battling cancer.
Women who demonstrate how after the disease you can go back to being stronger than beforeto compete in new and never even imagined experiences: over time the project, created to spread the importance of prevention through physical activity and raise funds to devote to scientific research, has become a support network for patients who have gone through similar paths and that with their experiences they show first hand how much science can change the destiny of those who face cancer.
The Veronesi Foundation was created in 2003 in the name of the great oncologist and carries out projects that combine health and care with the desire to give patients an even fuller life (photo Getty Images).
Each of the many stories collected over the years is proof of how much research achievements translate into health, well-being and life: for example, also thanks to the studies funded by the Foundation, freezing oocytes is now a reality for many women who can become mothers after cancer.
«At the age of 37, I discovered triple negative breast cancer, I faced a quadratectomy and chemotherapy» says Gabriella, one of the Pink ambassadors of the project. «Before the treatments, I was offered cryopreservation of the oocytes to give me a chance of motherhood afterwards: keeping three oocytes was my foothold during chemotherapy. Then as Pink ambassador I ran the New York marathon: thanks to running and to this wonderful group of women who have lived the same path as me, I understood that after an illness you can return to an almost normal life. AND in July 2015 my two children were born».
Medicine tailored to the person
Another example of research that can change the future of women? The PINK study (Prevention Imaging Network Knowledge)supported by the Umberto Veronesi Foundation and created to understand whether the different methods of diagnosing breast cancer, such as mammography, ultrasound and tomosynthesis (a recent 3D and high definition imaging technique), have different levels of sensitivity and specificity in recognizing tissue alterations depending on the woman and the type of cancer: still ongoing, it plans to involve around 50,000 women over 40 in Italy and thanks to a personalized medicine approach, it will be able to indicate the most effective prevention strategy in each, to identify tumors earlier and better.
Understanding more and more deeply how cancer behaves to defeat it has been and is the goal of the 147 research projects promoted so far by the Foundation, which in twenty years has financed 2193 researchers in 176 Institutes and Universities, in Italy and abroad, often women (the 141 scholarships in 2023 are 72 percent for female researchers).
With an eye not only to projects on female cancer, but also to pediatric oncology, for years one of the sectors in which the Umberto Veronesi Foundation has been most active with the project Gold for Kids with which research and medical treatment for younger patients are financed, but also dissemination activities on cancer among children and teenagers.
Over the years, treatment protocols aimed at the needs of children and adolescents with acute myeloid leukemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, bone sarcomas and other tumors have been launched, as well as a sarcoma genomics project and the Passport of the healed, a computerized platform for the long-term management of clinical data of children who have had cancer.
Paolo Veronesi with his father Umberto, who passed away on November 8, 2016.
Five years of diet studies
Cancer is in the crosshairs of the Umberto Veronesi Foundation also through initiatives such as the request to introduce tobacco taxation policies for a smoke-free Europe, one of the main risk factors for many cancers, recently brought to the European Parliament together with the European Cancer Organisation; preventing neoplasms is also the objective of one of the two innovative international research and treatment platforms recently launched by the Foundation, the Humbert project on nutrition and cancer.
A quarter of new cancer diagnoses could be prevented and with a healthy diet and adequate physical activity, the risk of getting sick could be reduced by up to 30 percent: for this reason the Foundation, together with the IRCCS Neuromed of Pozzilli in Molise, has launched a project in which over the next five years, thanks to a loan of over one million euros and an IT platform, a biobank and a large , we will try to better understand the role of nutrition in the most common tumours.
«Much of what we know today about the effect of lifestyles on breast, prostate and colorectal cancer comes from studies conducted abroad: for this project we use the data of over 25,000 Italians involved in the MoliSani study from 2005 to 2010for which we have a lot of information» explains Marialaura Bonaccio, coordinator of the Humbert project.
«We want to go beyond what we already know, for example, about the role of the Mediterranean diet in reducing chronic inflammation and therefore the risk of chronic diseases such as tumors, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. We want to point out what the Mediterranean diet means, which is not reduced to a greater consumption of fruit and vegetables. Aspects such as how foods are cooked or stored, where foods come from or how they are processed could play a role in cancer risk, because for example they could affect exposure to food contaminants: the Umberto project, thanks also to the use of predictive algorithms and artificial intelligence, is studying the diet in detail to then give simple messages to citizens and guide their choices at the table. Truly rediscovering the Mediterranean diet of our roots, which also protects us from cancer» concludes Bonaccio.
The PALM Research Project
Funded with three million euros, it involves four Italian and foreign centers of excellence: is the avant-garde project to be able to cure children with acute myeloid leukemia tomorrow PALM (Pediatric Acute Leukemia of Myeloid origin) Research Project. It is the new national network coordinated by the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital, already active and capable of optimizing the treatment of the 70 Italian children who fall ill with this very aggressive and rare form of leukemia every year.
The centralized diagnostic laboratory of the Oncohematological Clinic of Padua, the Department of Experimental Oncology of the European Institute of Oncology of Milan and the Department of Leukemia of the MD Anderson Cancer Center of Houston, in the United States, participate in the Child Jesus. The target? “Increasing the percentage of young patients who recover, lower than in other less rare leukemias,” says Franco Locatelli, head of the Pediatric Oncohematology and Cell and Gene Therapy Area of the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome.
«We will work on three strands. With advanced molecular diagnostic techniques we will try to identify molecular lesions in the 30 percent of tumors in which we cannot see them with standard analyses, to understand if some are indicative of worse outcomes and indicate the opportunity to intensify treatment, to find possible targets and monitor responses to therapies. We will also do this with the Next Generation Sequencing (extensive sequencing of the genome, which evaluates the presence of many genetic alterations in one go, ed). Secondly, we will try to identify the cell populations that resist treatment and are responsible for the relapses; In the end, we will realize CAR-NK cells targeting the tumor which, unlike CAR-T (lymphocytes taken from the patient, engineered and then re-infused to eliminate neoplastic cells, ed), can be produced starting from donors, reducing treatment preparation times. CAR-NK immunotherapy in animal studies is as effective as CAR-T but less toxic: we want to demonstrate its potential in children and then use this route in adults, in whom acute myeloid leukemia is more frequent”.
A European protocol will start soon: it is the first experience of its kind that will allow 200 children to have access to studies every year, also reducing the time it takes to arrive at the results. “The goal is to make acute myeloid leukemia largely curable in the near future,” says Locatelli.
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