New progress in the personalized treatment of cancer has been made by a group of researchers from Columbia University, led by Italians Antonio Iavarone and Anna Lasorella. “We have discovered the mechanism behind an important genetic alteration that causes a large percentage of cancers, including glioblastoma, the most aggressive and lethal type of brain tumour,” Iavarone explained to the Corriere. “And thanks to this discovery we are testing ‘targeted’ treatments to block their development”.

The results of this research, which Iavarone said had “been going on for years”, were published yesterday in Nature. They “were achieved using a complex series of techniques, such as the analysis of Big Data, involving the study of the genetic sequences of tumours, catalogued by the American project The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)”, for which Iavarone is lead brain tumour researcher.