Dr. Gloria Ravegnini, currently a researcher at the University of Bologna, Italy, was awarded a 50.000 USD from The Sarcoma Foundation of America per 1 year for pre-clinical, translational, and clinical research on the etiology, molecular biology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of human sarcomas.
Her project, Identifying DNA damage repair-related vulnerabilities in leiomyosarcoma, is focused on Leiomyosarcoma (LMS), an aggressive tumor of the smooth muscle with no available effective treatments and a 2-year survival rate of about 20%.
The project aims to identify DNA repair-related biologic vulnerabilities in LMS as well as biologically rational drugs with inhibitory activity against this chemo-resistant and aggressive sarcoma type. The successful completion of this project will yield novel insights into LMS biology and will lay to develop novel therapeutic approaches to improve LMS patients’ outcomes.
The award will allow Dr. Ravegnini, to develop her research at the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology and to continue to work on the project that started one year ago in Boston.
Indeed, the preliminary data for this project were achieved during her stay in the U.S. as a Fulbright grantee, which allowed her to spend a 5-month period at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH, Harvard Medical School) in Boston, under the mentorship of Prof. Fletcher JA.