To Indraccolo the clinical relevant question is: “how the patient will respond to anti-angiogenic therapy?” In many cases, molecular medicine is used to find therapeutic targets that allow us to make personalized treatment of cancer, “explained Indraccolo who said that “unfortunately, in anti-angiogenic therapies this is not possible yet.” His group has recently published a study suggesting that the AMPK signaling pathway (involved in the regulation of cellular metabolism) may be associated with the response to these therapies in certain phenotypes. According to the investigator, depending on whether the tumor is highly glycolytic or not, the response to anti-angiogenic therapy will be different. Therefore, he said “we need imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance spectroscopy or positron emission tomography which allow us to know the metabolism of tumor before deciding whether it is appropriate or not an anti-angiogenic therapy”.

About Stefano Indraccolo

Dr. Stefano Indraccolo’s scientific career has been focused on Experimental Immunology and Oncology.

He has significantly contributed to the mechanisms of B cell activation during immunodeficiency and their implications for lymphoma development and to the improvement of retroviral vectors and their delivery of anti-angiogenic genes for gene therapy of cancer. In the last years, he exploited his expertise and scientific background to study the process of angiogenesis in tumors and the phenomenon of tumor dormancy.