“Today, in the era of genomics, a revolution is underway that leads to an increasingly ‘personalised’ or rather ‘precision’ medicine: a medicine that focuses on the characteristics of the disease in the individual patient to define the most appropriate therapy at the right time in the clinical pathway”. Thus Diana Bracco in her lectio doctoralis on ‘Present and future of personalized medicine and precision imaging’ held at the University of Messina, on the occasion of the awarding of the honorary research doctorate in Applied Biology and Experimental Medicine.
“By combining and analyzing information about our genome with other clinical and diagnostic information, patterns can be identified that help determine an individual’s risk of developing disease, detect disease earlier, and determine the most effective interventions to improve our health,” he said. said Bracco – Diagnostic imaging lends itself very well to meeting the needs of precision medicine thanks to its non-invasive nature, associated with minimal risks for the patient. Precision diagnostics is the future. We are moving towards a medicine where diagnostic and therapy are increasingly united”.
An example, underlined the entrepreneur, “is theragnostics, which is the combination of the words diagnostic and therapeutic, and allows, thanks to imaging-guided applications, to treat a disease, in particular oncology. The concept of theragnostics means that if “You can see a specific disease feature, you can probably even treat it. Using these cutting-edge technologies, new potential indications will further advance precision medicine.”
The awarding of the honorary doctorate took place during the inauguration ceremony of the academic year of the University of Messina which was also attended by the Minister of the University, Anna Maria Bernini, the Deputy Minister of Economy Maurizio Leo and Maria Cristina Messa, full professor of diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy at the University of Milano-Bicocca. Diana Bracco, born in Milan and graduated in Chemistry with an honorary degree in Pharmacy in Pavia and one in Medicine in Rome, is president and CEO of the Bracco Group, a multinational company founded in 1927. Cavaliere del Lavoro was the first female president of Federchimica and Assolombarda and for many years vice president for Research and Innovation in Confindustria.
“In a large company – added Bracco in his speech – research does not only concern the creation of new methods and product innovation, but also the development of innovative production methods that are efficient, green and sustainable over time. This branch of activity, which we carry out above all in the Colleretto Giacosa Centre, expresses Bracco’s constant attention to the environment which always pushes us to work towards more efficient processes, in which the use of raw materials is optimised, with the ambition to continue to reduce emissions and achieve carbon neutrality”.
On the future of medical science he added: “experimental, molecular, genomic, predictive medicine must continue to have the human being as a reference. If we are able to create the right overlap between science, increasingly sophisticated technologies and the centrality of man then we will continue to pay off a millennial debt of knowledge with our patients. I am confident that the medicine of the future will continue to be based on this alliance”.
