To significantly impact on survival and quality of life of cancer patients by providing the best care to every patient through integrated clinical practice, laboratory medicine and research
Project
The aim of the project is to develop a biochip that evaluates the circulating levels of at least 10 molecules that, based on the literature present and the data obtained by my team, are significantly associated with the aggressiveness of prostate cancer. This kit allows to obtain a risk index that the patient is suffering from an aggressive prostate tumor starting from a single blood sample. The definition of the level of aggressiveness of the disease in the initial stages of diagnosis allows to reduce overtreatment in patients with clinically confined PCa, addressing radical prostatectomy only if the classification of the tumor indicates a pathology with a high risk of progression.
The proposed biochip allows the simultaneous measurement of multiple analytes producing a complete patient profile with a method that saves time, money and resources. In support of the idea of evaluating more markers, there is also evidence from the literature data of the improvement of diagnostic and prognostic performance obtained by combining several tumor markers with respect to the use of the single marker. ElicaDEA aims to create health, improving the quality of life of prostate cancer patients. By 2030 we will reduce cases of over-treatment of prostate tumors and the side effects of therapies (erectile dysfunction and incontinence), with a positive impact on male health! Clearly such a system has advantages for all the actors in this story: for the urologist who has a more accurate tool to choose the best treatment for that patient, for the National Health System that would see a significant reduction in the costs of the whole path-diagnostic-therapeutic of the patient, for the laboratory that should try a quick and easy method and above all for the patient who would avoid radical therapy and the possible fearsome associated side effects.
In developed and industrialized countries, prostate cancer is the most common cancer due to incidence, next to the lung cancer. In particular, the incidence increases progressively with the patient's age: on average more than 1 in 4 men over 75 years is affected by prostate cancer. Hence the evidence that this tumor is destined to play an increasingly important role in Public Health, due to the increase in the percentage of elderly people in the world population. In the European Community countries the incidence rate of prostate cancer is 55 cases per 100,000 males. At world level, however, the incidence is highest in the US with 130-150 cases per 100,000, while it is lower in China, Japan and Africa. The incidence has risen sharply, by about 20%, in the USA in the last decade. With the introduction in the clinical practice of the PSA there has been a noticeable increase in the diagnosis of the neoplasm, to which, however, only a slight increase in mortality was paid. In fact, a significant proportion of diagnosed prostate cancers are at low risk of progression. In particular, it is estimated that on average about 50% of new cases diagnosed are represented by a clinically localized tumor, for which alternative therapeutic strategies could be used for radical prostatectomy such as active surveillance. In fact, it is well known that radical prostatectomy is not free from side effects such as mainly incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Active surveillance is a mode of clinical monitoring of prostate cancer that aims to avoid unnecessary treatment in men with mildly aggressive tumors without affecting their prognosis, while waiting to intervene with radical treatment if the disease demonstrates different characteristics from those to the diagnosis or where there was evidence of disease progression. Currently, patients included in active surveillance protocols are subject to a disease with a low risk of progression, with life expectancy exceeding 10 years and which agree with an abstention from immediate treatment. To identify patients with disease at low risk of progression, the prognostic criteria used at the moment are the clinical stage, the degree of the tumor and the PSA. However, in approximately 70% of patients undergoing radical prostatectomy there is evidence of a clinically insignificant tumor. Therefore, for the prostate tumor there is a consistent phenomenon of over-treatment and there is an absolute need for useful tools to accurately identify the aggressiveness of the tumor in order to choose the best therapeutic strategy for that patient.
