Research and development of new diagnostic and therapeutic metodologies

The course is composed of different modules.

Pathology (MED/08) module will include the following issues:

- The pathology lab: a platform for patients' diagnosis and therapy
- Technologies and methods for assessing predictive factors in cancer patients.
- Molecular follow-up of tumor resistance: the liquid biopsy model.
- Pathology in the multidisciplinary team: from morphology to genome.

Applied medical science module (MED/50) will provide a description of the main applications of non-invasive imaging techniques to the study and characterization of tumours also in relation to different therapeutic options. In detail leading contents will be:
- Main Diagnostic Imaging procedures and their applications:
· RX/CT, Ultrasound.
· Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): methodology, and advanced applications.
· Nuclear based techniques: Principles and methods of single photon emission tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET) imaging procedures and main tracers for oncological imaging.
- Identification and use of Imaging BIomarkers
- Introduction to Radiomics.

Concerning haematology, the program will include:
- A description of the concept and the clinical meaning of "minimal residual disease" in hematology, in particular of lymphoid and myeloid neoplasms
- An illustration of the main technical methods to monitor minimal residual disease and the pros and cons of each methods, in particular: cytofluorimetric analysis, molecular methods including PCR and digital droplet PCR.
- A discussion of how the "minimal residual disease" strategy is applied in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia and myeloid malignancies.

As regards Blood diseases lectures the course will revolve around next-generation sequencing applied to two main haematological disorders, i.e. acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma. The role of NGS will be described in relation to its ability to identify:
- driver events beyond mutations (copy number changes, rearrangements, mutational signatures);
- the distinction between driver and passenger mutations;
- the acquisition of mutations in the different sub clones of the tumor that contribute to its heterogeneity;
- the order of acquisition of driver events to dissect events required for disease initiation and those associated to disease progression;
- prognostic and predictive markers of disease response;
- the best markers and best techniques for MRD detection.

For the molecular biology module main issues will be the following:
- Introduction to the epistemology of precision oncology and its implications for diagnostic and therapeutic innovations
- Cancer epigenetics, from biomarkers to therapeutic applications:
· Epigenetic reprogramming in cancer and the insight from reprogramming technologies
· Epigenetic tracers of tumor cell of origin in diagnosis and prognosis
· Epigenetic vulnerabilities as as actioanble targets
- Patient-specific tumor models for advancing precision oncology: from xenografts to organoids
- Artificial Intelligence for precision oncology: high resolution multi-omic datasets from discovery to prediction.