President Carrozza visits HT and Polo Milano 4
During her visit to Milan 4, the President was accompanied by Daniela Corda and Sabato D’Auria, respectively directors of the Departments of Biomedical Sciences and Bioagri-food, and she had the opportunity to know the Institute of Biomedical Technologies directed by Gianluca De Bellis (Itb) , which hosts important infrastructures of genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics, and the Institute of Bioimaging and Molecular Physiology (Ibfm) directed by Danilo Porro, where, among others, the physiological and pathogenetic mechanisms related to aging are investigated. The other heads of the Lombard biomedical area also presented their scientific activities: Michela Matteoli, director of the Institute of neuroscience, where important research is carried out to understand the organization and functioning of the nervous system, and Giovanni Maga, director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics, where both healthy and pathological cells are studied through a coordinated strategy and a systemic approach.
At the Human Technopole headquarters, a meeting was held with the director Iain Mattaj, the president Marco Simoni and some representatives of the research areas of the Institute for Life Sciences, who showed the President Carrozza the first laboratory spaces of HT. At this meeting the department and institute directors of the CNR were also present.
“I am happy to have met the colleagues of the CNR Polo in Segrate and to have seen the Human Technopole summit at their headquarters in the morning,” said the President. “These were informal, simple and friendly visits, in the spirit of a meeting between researchers and researchers, but important to prepare for the challenges that the post-pandemic presents us, starting with the ecological transition, digital transformation and health . Challenges in which the contribution of research is fundamental, and particularly of that in the biomedical field, in which I intend to strongly strengthen the role of the CNR”.
“It is a great pleasure to welcome the new Cnr President Maria Chiara Carrozza to Palazzo Italia,” said the director of Human Technopole, Iain Mattaj. «From the very first months of activity, Human Technopole started a dialogue with the representatives of the national research community to build a network of collaboration with the local realities and bring added value to an already very strong ecosystem. We share with the CNR the commitment to enhance scientific excellence, the open and international approach and the goal of training the next generation of researchers “.
Thus, there is an urgent need to identify ways to potentiate the therapy and overcome acquired resistance of homologous recombination-deficient cancer cells. In a recent work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA (PNAS) by researchers of IGM and IFOM, Dana Branzei and Nanda Kumar Jegadesan identify that the helicase DDX11 is critical to mitigate replication stress in a range of cancers by facilitating upstream steps in homologous recombination repair related to efficient resection of double strand breaks. Importantly, DDX11 acts in manners non-redundant with BRCA1 and BRCA2. Strikingly, this study shows thar targeting DDX11 improves chemotherapy response in both chemotherapy sensitive and drug-resistant BRCA1/2-mutated cancers that regained homologous recombination proficiency by suppressor mutation or somatic reversion. Thus, DDX11 provides a mechanism of replication stress tolerance in cancers, a finding that can be exploited therapeutically in the future through the development of specific inhibitors of DDX11 helicase activity.
