New Drugs Program

Main goals of the Program is to guarantee quick access to innovation to IEO patients through:

• Commitment to provide exciting new therapies from the very earliest stages, when they first enter the clinic
• Accelerated activation and conduction of high quality early clinical trials (phase I and early phase II)
• Promotion of innovative early clinical-trials linked to molecular screenings/analyses
• The identification of new drugs
• Promotion of innovative studies in preclinical models/on patient samples to test new therapies and identify new targets/biomarkers.

In our program, our doctors and scientists work together to expand our drug development initiatives and our patients benefit from close communication with their healthcare team. To achieve these goals, we aim to further strengthen the interactions among the two “souls” of our Institute (basic research and clinical research). Our mode of work therefore starts with questions/hypotheses that have roots in fundamental research, and at the same time reflect an immediate clinical question/patient need. Deepening our mechanistical understanding of those questions will therefore translate into a “product” (new markers, new treatments) that will be tested clinically, and -in case of success of the clinical studies- can result in a ready benefit for our patients.

At present, our work is focusing on identifying new mechanisms of resistance to therapy, including new drugs that recently entered clinical use. We hope to overcome these mechanisms with a combination of multiple drugs, and have already achieved preclinical results supporting this line of research.