Cancer: Eight hospitals are operating with CAR-T. Bertolaso: "We're working toward a single cell factory in Lombardy."

"In Lombardy, there are eight major hospitals working with CAR-T," a type of cellular immunotherapy that modifies T cells to recognize and attack cancer . "Lombardy is working on a program agreement, which we will finalize by the end of the year, which will bring these institutions together to establish who does what and how to organize a single Cell Factory for the region. And we will go further, because another consideration we must always keep in mind is the return of brains."

Bertolaso ​​in Assolombarda

This was explained by Guido Bertolaso, Councillor for Welfare of the Lombardy Region, during his speech today at a meeting at Assolombarda on the results of the Sanità Futura 2025 Forum, promoted by Health Ecole-Scuola di sanità, together with the University of Milan, the Polytechnic University of Milan, and with the contribution of institutional and association partners.

"Today," Bertolaso ​​emphasized, "we have an extremely positive economic climate, with the freeze on state funding in the United States. There are many Italians who would immediately buy a ticket and return home if they were offered the prospect of returning. Do we want to lose this opportunity? These are people who, among other things, studied and graduated in Italy, so we invested and spent money on their education." "And today they feel this desire to return to lend a hand to their country. So we must offer them opportunities."

The Car-T challenge

"From this perspective, the world of CAR-T and the world of our researchers in the United States represent a huge challenge," the councilor concluded. "And we are working with some of our top Italian scientists in the US to bring them home and include them in this coordination program for CAR-T and the Cell Factory, giving them the opportunity to continue their research on solid tumors. CAR-T has, in fact, made significant progress in blood cancers, and today we are all focused on developing the part relating to solid tumors. Bringing all these organizations and various researchers together, placing them in a university so that they can also train and therefore 'produce' other researchers on this topic, can certainly make Lombardy a cutting-edge institution in this field as well."