In continuing their mutual commitment to support the training and education of physician-scientists in oncology and hematology, Fondazione Gianni Bonadonna (FGB) and Fondazione AIRC are pleased to announce the winner of the second edition of the Call for international fellowships, named in memory of Gianni Bonadonna. The Call is meant to support a young oncologist or hematologist for a period of study abroad. Eleonora Calabretta will spend a three-year training period in a renowned international research center, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she will study diffuse large B cell lymphoma.
Eleonora Calabretta, from Carmelo Carlo-Stella’s research group at Humanitas University in Milan, will join Margaret Ann Shipp’s lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to study diffuse large B cell lymphoma. This tumor, the most common subtype of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, is highly heterogeneous and none of the conventional prognostic categories defined by clinical characteristics or gene expression profiling can capture its biological complexity. At present, there are no evidence-based criteria to guide the choice and/or sequence of both innovative and conventional therapies. The goal of Dr. Calabretta’s project will be to understand the role of five distinct clusters with specific genetic signatures, previously identified in the laboratories of Professor Shipp and Dr. Gad Getz, in newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and relapsed/refractory disease. The characterization and analysis of genetic signatures in the two different settings will take advantage of patients’ data from the phase III POLARIX clinical study, comparing Polatuzumab-R-CHP with standard R-CHOP. The translational research project aims at defining the molecular subtypes of newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma most likely to benefit from the novel Pola-R-CHP combination, as well as any specific patterns of increased or reduced vulnerability to therapy. Moreover, the project aims at verifying the genetic signatures clusters that are more prevalent in relapsing or refractory disease and at identifying new genetic lesions or distinct subclones emerging from treatment-specific selective pressure that may reveal the mechanisms of resistance to the first-line therapy itself, as well as timing of relapse and susceptibility to salvage treatment.
For the second consecutive year, the mutual commitment of Fondazione Gianni Bonadonna and Fondazione AIRC is therefore confirmed in supporting research projects that can contribute to the progress of knowledge, to offer more effective and safer cancer therapies to many patients, while improving the precision of targeted therapies in oncology.
