Artificial Intelligence holds the potential to significantly contribute to the shift towards a more personalized approach. Having multidisciplinary skills and establishing working groups that bring together biomedical researchers and computer scientists is necessary to attain this ambitious goal
Here, Prof. Guadagni examines how she has managed the coordination of a multidisciplinary team during an EU-funded project.
Prof. Guadagni is a Full Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Clinical Molecular Biology at the San Raffaele Roma Open University. In 2005, she has been appointed as the Scientific Coordinator of the InterInstitutional Multidisciplinary Biobank (BioBIM) of the IRCCS San Raffaele, Italy, an advanced Biological Resource Centre (BRC) provided with a proprietary Data Lake for data matching, data mining and integration. Its multidisciplinary organization allows pluripotency, flexibility and the involvement of several areas of expertise.
The Institutional network of collaborations with other Academes, Research Institutions and Biobanks strengthens the possibility of promoting cultural exchange at a national and international level, promoting the transfer of scientific results from bench to bedside.
Accordingly, the BioBIM research program, coordinated by Prof. Guadagni, is focused on translational research, biospecimen science and the implementation of data science methodologies.
Pushing for personalized medicine: Translational research and biomarker discovery
Prof. Guadagni has, indeed, an international long lasting experience in the field of translational research and biomarker discovery, spanning from prognostic assessment to innovative therapeutic approaches in complex chronic disorders, including cancer immunotherapy and vaccines. Special interest is devoted to the use and construction of innovative informatics platforms to improve healthcare organization and efficiency, thus ensuring a more person-centred medical approach.
Other research interests concern the creation of online systems for the collaborative creation and management of ontologies, as well as the analysis of some regulatory aspects in terms of privacy and security, with particular interest in the Health sector (e-Health care), “Internet of Things “(IoT) and Big Data analysis and their privacy implications not only for patients, but also for doctors and healthcare professionals, as well as for developers of ICT infrastructures.
In view of her expertise, Prof. Guadagni has received international recognition as a member of the Quality Management Group on Biobanks and the Working Group in “Biospecimen Sciences” of the International Society of Biorepository Research (ISBER) and in 2020 she received the SITC (Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer) Team Science Award as part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) (Bethesda, MD, USA) Cancer Immunotherapy Program team for having contributed to the growth and success of biological therapy/ immunotherapy over the past 35 years, allowing these treatments to be considered the standard of care today.
The REVERT project: taRgeted thErapy for adVanced colorEctal canceR paTients
In the past four years, Prof. Guadagni has been the project coordinator of the REVERT (taRgeted thErapy for adVanced colorEctal canceR paTients) GA number 848098 (H2020-SC1- 2019-Two-Stage-RTD – Topic: SC1-BHC-02-2019 – Systems approaches for the discovery of combinatorial therapies for complex disorders), aimed at the development of a decision support system able to predict an individual’s response to treatment and create a personalized treatment.
Project activities have been made possible by the close collaboration between computer scientists and physicians, ultimately harnessing technology’s potential to improve medical treatment.
