Precision Medicine Centers are also arriving in Italy: physical and virtual places where interdisciplinary skills, research and technological innovation come together in the fight against diseases
Founded in Palermo, where it has its registered office, the Heal Italia National Foundation opens its first two centers dedicated to precision medicine in Cagliari and Ancona. The goal is to transfer the progress of scientific research and technological innovations to the healthcare world to translate knowledge, acquired in experimental contexts, into clinical practice and thus contribute to the fight against chronic diseases with increasingly early diagnoses and increasingly targeted therapies. The Foundation, created thanks to the PNRR funding of the Ministry of University and Research, after just two years, with the first 40 million invested on a financial endowment of over 114 million, records the first important results in terms of scientific production, technological development and experimentation of new and integrated organizational-managerial models intended for the healthcare world. The first two centers in Cagliari and Ancora will be two “Precision Medicine Centers” resulting from a collaboration between the Heal Italia Foundation and the partner universities of Cagliari and Politecnica delle Marche, where the centers will be located. Specifically, the center in Cagliari will be called Sardinian Heal Italia Precision Medicine Center and will be located at CeSAR, the University Service Center for Research of the University of Cagliari. It will provide integrated diagnostic services and clinical and preclinical research to support the fight against complex and oncological diseases, including rare and very rare neoplasms and preneoplastic conditions on a hereditary or acquired basis. The goal of the Center is to identify disease markers and new therapeutic targets, expanding the use of liquid biopsy for the diagnosis and monitoring of oncological patients. In parallel, the expansion of the biobank of tumors and human tumor cell lines will allow researchers to be offered a fundamental tool for translational research and functional validation of the results obtained through the most advanced genome sequencing technologies. The great scientific and technological background created thanks to the Heal Italia Foundation, combined with the rich endowment of CeSAR has allowed the birth of this Center, which will have the precious synergic collaboration with the University Hospitals of Cagliari and Sassari and other Health Authorities present in the regional and interregional territory. Sardinia has always been a land open to experimentation and innovation, especially in the genomic field, often acting as a pilot region for projects of national and supranational scope. Also in this case, thanks to the Heal Italia Foundation, it will promote, together with the Ancona center, a model for the development of precision medicine that can be expanded on a large scale and focused on the needs of patients and the territory.
“The Sardinian Heal Italia Precision Medicine Center – explains Prof. Andrea Perra (who is also the Scientific Representative for the University of Cagliari affiliated with Heal Italia) – will bring together the skills of the Oncology and Molecular Pathology Unit, which has laboratories equipped for research on tumor cells and the complete analysis of gene transcription levels, up to the study of individual altered proteins. The center also has an advanced system for the multi-omic analysis of each individual tumor cell. In synergy with the Heal Italia Core Facility and the other Centers for Precision Medicine that will be created thanks to the Foundation’s initiative, the Oncology and Molecular Pathology Unit will be responsible for the functional validation of the results obtained from the genomic investigations conducted at CeSAR, making it faster to identify the research results that can really have an impact on patient care”
“Our goal – continues Sabrina Giglio, director of CeSAR and Medical Genetics of Cagliari – is also to increasingly implement the use of information derived from genomics in clinical practice, with particular attention to oncological pathology. To achieve this goal, which I have been working on for several years now, both as a Geneticist and as Director of CeSAR, it is essential to invest in research, training and implementation of genomics and other omic sciences (transcriptomics, proteomics, etc.) to enhance their impact on patient care and disease prevention. Only through an integrated and collaborative approach will it be possible to improve people’s health and quality of life. In fact, the full exploitation of omic information requires a major training effort also for all healthcare personnel and in particular for doctors who are accustomed to more traditional methodologies. This challenge can be overcome in an extremely effective way through the implementation of extraordinary training and professional development programs”.
The Precision Medicine Center – HEAL ITALIA of Ancona, was born at the Department of Clinical and Molecular Sciences of the Polytechnic University of Marche and will deal with Precision Medicine in Internal Medicine and Rare Diseases.
“The goal – explains Prof. Gianluca Moroncini, Full Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Department of Clinical and Molecular Sciences, Polytechnic University of Marche – is to create multidisciplinary skills in precision medicine for each sub-specialty of Internal Medicine and implement diagnostic and therapeutic pathways for patients through innovative research, training and clinical assistance, similar to the Precision Medicine Center developed at Columbia University. Internal Medicine and Rare Diseases are still too often managed today, both in terms of prevention and diagnosis and therapy, according to a “one size fits all” model that does not take into account the enormous individual differences that lie in groups of subjects at risk or sick, and who unfortunately are all labeled and treated in the same way, when instead they should be grouped into distinct homogeneous subgroups, the so-called “endophenotypes”, to be managed differently”.
“Our goal – explains the Manager of Heal Italia, Laura Leonardis – is to transform the results of basic research into clinical tools by reducing the distances between University and Hospital in order to make Translational Medicine a concrete and powerful tool at the service of clinicians and above all patients. The Data Infrastructures, the Facilities Network (Biobanche, Cell Factory, Clinical Trial Center, High Technology Laboratories for Genomics, Diagnostics, accredited GMP Facility) and the service platforms of the HEAL ITALIA network, aim to create an integrated, polycentric and widespread system that facilitates research, collaboration with companies and allows the construction of acceleration programs aimed at facilitating the transfer of innovations produced by research to clinical practice, intended not as a point of arrival but as a point of verification and restart”. Our centers are both physical and virtual places in which multidisciplinary skills can work together to create, through the aid of facilities and 5.0 Technologies, first of all Artificial Intelligence, services capable of improving prediction and treatment and therefore the fight against chronic diseases. Within our network today, over 600 researchers, clinicians, engineers, physicists, and mathematicians operate in all regions, divided into approximately 80 entities that cover the entire Italian Life Sciences supply chain.
Heal Italia, which was born from a proposal by the University of Palermo with a project scientifically coordinated by Prof. Giorgio Stassi with the collaboration of 25 partners throughout Italy, today even more extensive thanks to new projects, will soon inaugurate two more operational offices in Milan and Rome.