In memoriam of Pinuccia Valagussa

Pinuccia Valagussa suddenly died on April 29, 2024. With her death, the field of medicine loses one of the key figures of a season that set the stage of modern clinical oncology in Italy and around the world.

Pinuccia arrived at the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori of Milan as a voluntary nurse, and soon thereafter started a life-long collaboration with Gianni Bonadonna. She made possible key studies on Hodgkin’s diseases, high grade lymphomas, adjuvant chemotherapy in operable breast cancer, and neoadjuvant therapy before surgery in women with locally advanced and high-risk breast carcinomas. Pinuccia Valagussa is worldwide renown as an outstanding clinical statistician. Statistics was only one of her many talents in clinical research. She was a formidable organizer and energetic entrepreneur who built the Operations Office of controlled therapies at the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan, a key service to medicine and clinical oncology that was, at the time, unprecedented in Italy and Europe. Over more than 40 years Pinuccia Valagussa kept methodical archive of all clinical studies generated by Gianni Bonadonna and his team of clinical researchers and contributed to studies that changed the way some malignancies are treated worldwide. Pinuccia Valagussa was a reference in the design of all clinical trials with the wisdom of a veteran and a general understanding of what it would take to successfully complete the projects. She made the studies possible with unshakable determination and ethical rigor. Pinuccia transferred all her qualities into the activity of Michelangelo Foundation, that she co-founded with Gianni Bonadonna and others in 1999. In the Foundation, Pinuccia collaborated in moving towards an international level the coordination and conduct of clinical studies.

Pinuccia Valagussa was reserved and a woman of few words. She could never pursue university studies. Yet, over the years she was editor and co-editor of books that were used in schools of medicine and, in 50 years of research, she contributed as key and often senior author to innumerable articles that appeared in journals which set the reference of medical practice around the world. THANKS PINUCCIA.