Three young researchers win the fifth edition of the Fellowship named after Gianni Bonadonna

The Call for international Fellowship named after Gianni Bonadonna, now in its fifth edition, confirms its importance among oncology researchers and Gianni Bonadonna Foundation, promoting the Fellowship with the support of the Prada Group and in collaboration with the European School of Oncology (ESO), is pleased to announce the 2025 recipients on World Cancer Day 2025: Leonardo Brunetti, Matteo Maria Naldini and Francesco Romano will spend a training year at renowned international oncology centers, where they will contribute to find new hopes of cure for many cancer patients.

Leonardo Brunetti, currently in Alessio Cortellini’s research group at the Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Campus Bio-Medico in Rome and clinical researcher in the Phase 1 Unit at Imperial College London, will study non-small cell lung cancer in Biagio Ricciuti’s laboratory at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The goal of his research will be a deeper understanding of the mechanisms leading to relapse in patients with non-small cell lung cancer initially responsive to PD-L1 inhibitors, to identify also which antigens evolve in cases of resistance to use them as potential therapeutic targets.

Matteo Maria Naldini, today in the team of Giampaolo Bianchini at the IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, will work on triple-negative breast cancer joining H. Raza Ali’s group at the Cancer Research of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. His studies will be focusing on the interactions between tumor and immune cells in response to immunotherapy by using advanced spatial proteomic technologies, including imaging mass cytometry, to identify and quantify novel clinical response biomarkers useful in guiding therapeutic decisions for precision oncology.

Francesco Romano is currently working with Pietro Genovese’s group at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where he will continue his project on acute myeloid leukemia and the application of Car-T in this disease, using advanced gene-editing techniques to mask healthy stem cells and protect them from the effects of Car-T therapy, while also developing multi-targeting Car-T cells that can prevent tumor escape through the modulation of single-antigens expression.

With its fifth edition, the “Fellowship Gianni Bonadonna” confirms its value as an opportunity for young doctors who wish to meet the challenge of oncology research.

The Gianni Bonadonna Foundation, the Prada Group as supporting partner and the European School of Oncology are therefore proud to announce the sixth edition of the Call for the “Fellowship Gianni Bonadonna” 2026 to support young researchers in their training to become physician-scientists. The full Call for applications will be published in the upcoming months on FGB institutional website.