IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas

Humanitas Research Hospital is a highly-specialized research and university hospital, the first in Italy to be certified for its excellence by the Joint Commission International as Academic Hospital. It hosts the residency and PhD programs of Humanitas University, a life science university that stands out for its real- world simulation-based approach to medical training and its international outlook, and a state-of-the-art translational research center.

In two dedicated buildings, many high-tech laboratories host more than 400 passionate researchers – physician scientists, biologists, physicists, data scientists and technologists – that work with a common mission: advancing science to make a difference in patients’ life. Humanitas research is guided by unmet clinical needs and it leverages high-end technologies to dissect the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying human pathologies in fields ranging from cardiovascular medicine to neuroscience, from immunology to cancer and microbiology, with the final goal of developing new therapies and new diagnostic and prognostic strategies.

At the core of the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Brain Pathology research activity is a multidisciplinary approach to the study of glioblastoma with an emphasis on innovative therapeutic targets and their brain delivery based on the use of specific nanovectors.

The laboratory's contribution to the field is twofold:

• The generation of a large collection of patient-derived primary cell lines which provide GBM disease cellular models for both in vitro and in vivo studies, which are available to the scientific community.
• The demonstration that low doses of radiation (standard of care for GBM) improve nanovector delivery to GBM and preserve the healthy brain parenchyma. This has led to the preclinical therapeutic validation in GBM-PDX models of a combination strategy to treat GBM based on the concomitant use of radiation and drug-loaded liposomes conjugated with the ApoE-peptide, known to facilitate the crossing of the blood brain barrier by transcytosis, to vehicle doxorubicin.

IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas (ICH) is part of the ACC italian Patient-derived Cancer Model Collection (ACC-PCMC).