The Chocolates of Research are available today in 2,500 Italian squares (here is the list). The Airc Foundation for cancer research offers a pack of Venchi chocolates in exchange for 15 euros to finance the study of new treatments for tumors and support over 770 ongoing research projects. For the entire month of November you will also be able to receive the chocolates via Amazon or in Banco Bpm branches.
Among the challenges faced by Airc at the moment is the age of tumors which is decreasing. In the United States, the risk of getting colon cancer under the age of 50 has increased by 3% in the last decade. In Great Britain this type of cancer affects 26% of men and 39% of women more than in 2018. In Italy today 20% of women with breast cancer are under 40 years old. The number has almost doubled compared to 30 years ago.
“It is estimated that in the 1930s one colon cancer in three develops in an individual under 50 years of age, before the age of screening even begins” explains Alberto Bardelli, who teaches histology at the University of Turin and in Milan is the scientific director of Ifom, the molecular oncology institute of the Airc Foundation.
"The increase, which also concerns other types of cancer, especially breast cancer, has been observed in the USA, Great Britain, Northern Europe, Australia, Japan and Canada. We have data relating to Lombardy" explains Bardelli.
An article published in the scientific journal Cell in February last year, the result of the collaboration between Ifom, Niguarda and the state university of Milan, began with the story of a 24-year-old boy, fit, with no cases of cancer in his family, who arrived at the emergency room in pain, with a colon tumor and metastases to the bones and liver. "We've always known that colon cancer takes ten years to reach this stage. Does that mean that boy got sick at 14?" the doctors in the office wondered perplexedly.
Why is this happening?
"We still don't have an answer, but some hypotheses have become clearer today. We hypothesize a change that occurred about thirty years ago, when today's young patients were children. It may be that they were exposed to new pollutants, to lifestyles that favor tissue inflammation or to changes in the microbiota, i.e. the set of microorganisms that populate the intestine."
What suspicions do you have?
"For now we are at the level of hypotheses. Let's think about exposure to fine particulate matter, such as PM 2.5, or substances that did not exist a few decades ago, such as plastics, BPA or PFAS. The diet has changed a lot and has modified the microbiome. It may be that there is a contribution from stress, which promotes inflammation, one of the possible causes of cancer. A Spanish group has hypothesized the use of the herbicide Picloram. For three and a half years we have been testing all these substances on mice. laboratory, to understand what impact they have. We know that it is a toxin capable of mutating DNA and that it depends on a past infection with some strains of Escherichia coli.
Are tumors in young people different from those in older people?
"In some respects they are a new disease. We know that they are not hereditary. They are not caused by those genetic mutations that make a tumor recurrent within a family. Reinforcing therapies does not necessarily improve the prognosis. We could imagine that a thirty-year-old tolerates chemotherapy better and that we can administer higher doses. Instead we have observed that we do not obtain benefits from this increase. We need to understand if these are tumors that develop even more rapidly, to readjust the frequency of screening. Many young people, faced with the first symptoms, certainly do not think about cancer. They often come to treatment when the disease is very advanced."
This week you published a study in the journal Cell Press Blue that even links juvenile colon cancer to the placenta.
"We created a large group, from Salvatore Siena's clinicians at Niguarda in Milan, who has a clinic dedicated to juvenile cancer, to Ifom and Ingm, the Institute of Molecular Genetics. We observed that tumors that arise before the age of 45 do not have different genetic characteristics compared to those of older people, but that same DNA produces slightly different proteins. Some resemble the proteins produced by the cells of the placenta during the development of the embryo. It was a brilliant intuition of Beatrice Bodega confirmed by Vincenzo Costanzo. It is surprising up to a certain point, because the development of the embryo is a phase in which the cells proliferate rapidly and the immune system must reorganize itself to not attack the growing child. In many cases, tumors also find strategies to hide from antibodies. We do not know why this happens, but it is a path that we will continue to follow in our future studies.
