Hi there! For the coming weeks, our blog will be dedicated to our Young SIOP Award winners!
Please meet Francesca del Bufalo, YI from Italy, in her own words.
I graduated from the Medical School in 2009 and grew my interest in the translational research by working on the characterization of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) derived from the bone-marrow of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), at Prof. Locatelli research laboratories, during her medical studies.
Subsequently, I spent 2 years as post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy (CAGT) of the Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston (TX, USA), with the mentorship of Dr. Brenner, where I focused my studies on immunotherapies of tumors (in particular, working on oncolytic adenoviruses, CAR T cells and 3D organoids of human cancers).
At Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital (OPBG) I setup my own Lab, thanks to the fundings received from the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC), being awarded with a 5-year My First AIRC Grant, and from the Italian Ministry of Health on projects aimed at combining treatment with Oncolytic Viruses and immunotherapy. At OPBG, I combine the research and the clinical activity. During the residency in Pediatrics, I further specialized in Haematology-Oncology, under the mentoring of Prof. Locatelli, and developed a particular interest on cancer immunotherapy, brain tumors, ALL, lymphomas, allogeneic and autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for malignant and non-malignant disorders. At OPBG, together with the bedside clinical activity, I am involved in several innovative phase I/II or III clinical trials testing either new drugs or cell therapies for the treatment of childhood haematologic malignancies. I am also primarily involved in the clinical translation of the academic CAR-T cell approaches developed at OPBG for both hematological and solid tumors (including neuroblastoma, sarcomas and brain tumors). In detail, I collaborated to define the design of the phase I/II clinical trials, to the writing of the clinical protocols and to the definition of the process of the GMP manufacturing of gene-modified T cells.
I am co-PI of the currently enrolling clinical trial on CD19-CAR T cells infused fresh to patients in first or subsequent relapse of BCP-ALL and manage all the patients enrolled in clinical trials with CAR-T cells at OPBG.
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