2023-09-05 16:19:30
Sending cancer metabolism into a tailspin, adopting special dietary measures to increase the effectiveness of chemo and immunotherapy in patients with breast, colorectal and lung cancers. This is the strategy studied against these three big killers by Claudio Vernieri, a young scientist from Ifom (Firc Institute of Molecular Oncology) and Int (National Cancer Institute) of Milan, awarded by the European Research Council with an Erc Starting grant from 1.5 million euros for the Metabalancecancer project.
“This important funding – explains Vernieri, born in 1984, a doctor and researcher with over 80 publications to his credit – will allow us to study new metabolic approaches in the therapy of human tumors in our Ifom laboratories. In particular, we will combine calorie restriction approaches, which we are already using it in the clinic with promising results, with new approaches to amino acid and fatty acid supplementation”. The hope, “within a year”, is “to get to the bedside with the start of a first clinical study at the Int, aimed at combining specific metabolic restriction and supplementation approaches in the treatment of human tumors” .
“I am really excited about this new adventure, both because this project opens up a new field of experimental research in oncology – underlines the scientist – and for the rapid repercussions that these discoveries could have in the care of our patients”.
How to make anticancer therapies more effective through the use of nutritional approaches – the Ifom recall – is one of the most significant challenges facing oncological research. Approaches that face this challenge by focusing on caloric restriction are increasingly widespread in the scientific community, collecting experimental evidence that seems to contrast radically with clinical practice which often provides for caloric or nutritional supplementation to energetically support the cancer patient.
Thanks to his double role as doctor and researcher, Vernieri, who has been carrying out research on the combination of metabolic restriction with conventional therapies for years, has taken a step beyond the dichotomy between the two schools of thought – the institute points out – identifying a point of previously unexplored intersection, which could be the key to making chemotherapy and immunotherapy even more effective. A frontier project that has earned the trust of the European Research Council.
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