“Just as children in a family are all different from one another, a cancer cell generates other diverse cells that continue to grow. It is by understanding exactly what happens that we can fight cancer“. With this analogy, Enzo Galligioni, President of the Pezcoller Foundation, explained the theme of the 37th Pezcoller Symposium—one of the most prestigious scientific events in the fight against cancer—which yesterday and today brought scientists from all over the world to the Department of Humanities in Trento.
This year, the event recorded a record turnout, with 75 research projects presented by young researchers. These are encouraging numbers in difficult times when, as Galligioni noted “research funds are being spent on other priorities, particularly to finance weapons and wars”.
The Symposium returned to the core theme of the fight against cancer: genetic mutations in cells, which are responsible for drug resistance. In fact, “while human evolution takes millennia, cancer evolution occurs within a single lifetime and progresses very rapidly”. This is why treatments can stop working because, as Nobel laureate William Kaelin added “cancer is a moving target that shifts easily and with great speed“. The solution lies in learning “how to choose therapies more efficiently, using multiple drugs simultaneously” — a shift in approach that ultimately incurs far lower costs than those of the disease itself.
