On March 15th, during the 15th edition of the St. Gallen International Breast Cancer Conference the European School of Oncology (ESO) awarded the first “Umberto Veronesi Memorial Award” to Dr Giuseppe Curigliano, Director of the IEO Division of New Drugs and Early Drug Development for Innovative Therapies.
The prize, dedicated to the memory of its founder, aims to “acknowledge the leading role of a doctor in the progress of science and in the treatment of breast cancer patients”.
“I am honored to receive the first Umberto Veronesi Memorial Award – said dr. Curigliano – during such an important conference like the St. Gallen meeting, the most prestigious international conference on the treatment of early stage breast cancer.
Prof. Veronesi’s legacy in the fight against breast cancer is well known in IEO and internationally. He taught his colleagues not just to accept the dogma but to continually question in order to innovate novel approaches to cancer treatment. Immunotherapy, in which Prof. Veronesi believed since the beginning, is a perfect example of a new approach to treatment and that is the reason why I decided to focus on this area for my Award Lecture. Suffice to say the primary role of vaccines in precancerous lesions and early stages breast tumors.
Innovators are always “troublemakers”: they question the reality they have in front of them looking for better answers. The name of my Division (New Drugs and Early Drug Development for Innovative Therapies), chosen by Prof. Veronesi, came precisely from this belief: changing what we see in front of us is the best way to better understand the problem”.
“Immunotherapy for breast cancer Hype or Hope?" was the title of Dr. Curigliano’s Award Lecture.
“Our studies at IEO – continued Dr. Curigliano – are in collaboration with our colleagues from France and Qatar. We have already identified which breast cancer genetic mutations make the tumor cells more recognizable to the patient’s immune system. This kind of research is fundamental to allow us to better select which patients are the best candidates for immunotherapy”.