Morpho-functional changes induced by antitumor drugs in preclinical tumor models.
Antitumor drugs are pivotal in cancer treatment and often serve as the primary therapeutic approach for various types of tumors.
While a significant portion of cancer cells responds to these treatments, some cells may resist, developing morphofunctional modifications and mutations that lead to drug resistance and contribute to tumor invasion and metastasis.
This challenge is observed across multiple cancer types, where tumors exhibit considerable heterogeneity and can become more aggressive due to treatment-induced resistance.
Treatment with a variety of therapeutic agents involve the generation of morpho-functional changes affecting tumoral cells (e.g. cell death, drug-resistance, epithelial to mesenchymal transition, polyploid giant cancer cells), or the tumor microenvironment (e.g. vasculature, extracellular matrix, and immune cells).
Given the significant role of these morphofunctional modifications in tumor progression and drug resistance, they hold considerable potential as prognostic tools or therapeutic targets.
The aim of this PhD project is to characterize the morpho-functional effects induced by antitumor drugs on transplantation tumor mouse models through the application of histological and immunohistochemical methods coupled with complementary techniques such as confocal microscopy, MALDI-MS, transcriptomics, to shed light into the pathogenetic mechanisms underlying tumor resistance to drugs, recurrence and progression, and possibly to pave the way to the identification of new therapeutical approaches able to eliminate/control tumoral cells resistant to classical chemotherapeutical agents.
Bachelor’s degree in Animal Breeding and Welfare in 2020 with honours at University of Milan (UNIMI) with a thesis focused on asepsis and control of microorganisms: applications in the operating field.
Master’s degree in Veterinary Biotechnology in 2022 with honours at University of Milan (UNIMI) with a thesis focused on the immunohistochemical evaluation of tumor-infiltrating immune cells in an orthotopic syngraft mouse model of HER2-positive breast cancer after modulation of the gut microbiota by prebiotics.
Scholarship for promising graduates from June 2023 to September 2024 at Mouse and Animal Pathology Laboratory (MAPLab, Fondazione UNIMI, Milano, Italy) based on the immunohistochemical characterization of the immune response in tumor mouse models.
PhD candidate in Veterinary Animal Science since October 2024.
The research activity is carried out at the MAPLab (Fondazione UNIMI, Milano) and the Department of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences (DIVAS) (UNIMI, Lodi).
Supervisor Dr. Camilla Recordati
Co-supervisor Prof. Paola Roccabianca
