The fellowships in memory of Gianni Bonadonna: an opportunity for growth

A not-to-be-missed opportunity for scientific and personal growth are the international fellowships named after Gianni Bonadonna, supported by the Gianni Bonadonna Foundation and AIRC Foundation for Cancer Research. The Call for fellowships is meant to allow young physician scientists in Italy to devote themselves to a research project abroad over the course of three-years. The three winners of the first two editions of the Call are firsthand witnesses of this opportunity, as they recount their experiences.

Gaia Giannone received a fellowship within the first edition of the Call named after Gianni Bonadonna. She has now been for a few months in the UK, at the Imperial College London, in Iain McNeish’s laboratory, characterizing the molecular and genomic profile of high-grade serous ovarian cancers. The research goals are to understand how such cancer evolves and to identify new therapeutic targets. «This experience», she says, «is giving me the opportunity to strengthen collaborations abroad and in Italy. For instance, I’m currently studying a subgroup of patients who develop brain metastases, in a collaboration with researchers at the University of Turin. Together, we are trying to understand what determines this clinical behavior. Living in a new city and in a fertile cultural environment is giving me the opportunity to grow as a researcher, as a physician and as a person. I’m learning how to better communicate with patients and caregivers, I’m experiencing what it means to do translational research and to be able to transfer laboratory results into the clinic».

The enthusiasm is shared by Stefania Morganti, the other winner of the first Call for fellowships named after Gianni Bonadonna. At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, in the laboratory of Nancy U. Lin and Heather A. Parsons, she is investigating the use of liquid biopsy to characterize early HER2+ metastatic breast cancer patients who respond optimally to therapy. «We have just started a multicenter clinical study in the United States, in which we will prospectively evaluate patients to see if we can discontinue maintenance therapy. Moreover, we ask patients in which study arm they want to enter. After a year and a half here, I am finally starting to reap the rewards of the first period of hard work, sleepless nights and constant challenges. Before this experience abroad, I hadn’t really understood how complicated academic research is in the United States. I am very grateful for the trust the scholarship gives us as young researchers, and especially for the time it offers us. In fact, having three years allows us to follow a project from start to finish».

This is what Eleonora Calabretta, winner of the second edition of the Call for international fellowships named after Gianni Bonadonna, started experiencing at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Professor Margaret Ann Shipp’s lab. She is a hematologist and says that she «found in the fellowship an unmissable opportunity to be able to continue a project that I had already started here in the United States, where I am studying patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The goal is to identify genetic signatures useful in selecting the best therapy for each patient. Dedicating time to research through projects designed for patients, to improve the medicine of the future, is a great opportunity that the fellowship named after Gianni Bonadonna gives us».