The Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore is the most comprehensive and complete legally recognized university in Italy: it includes five campuses (Milano, Brescia, Piacenza-Cremona, Roma and Campobasso) The “Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore” with its Gemelli Advanced Radiation Therapy (Gemelli-ART) participates to the projects through the application of high quality technology and technique in realization of high conformal and accurate radiotherapy treatments and moreover the consolidated clinical experience in administration of chemotherapy and biological drugs. The Gemelli-ART has the experience, the expertise and the resources adequate to provide a high qualified contribution to the project. In particular, the Gemelli-ART is a high volume treatments Unit with a consolidate quality assurance program. A complete cancer stadiation is guaranteed by the presence of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Department, allowing a high quality morphological (CT and MRI) and molecular imaging (Body Scan and PET-CT). The Radiation Therapy Unit organizes weekly multidisciplinary tumour board, to share a personalized therapeutic strategy.
The Radiotherapy Unit is used to treat many different forms of cancer, and it is equipped to deliver a large range of techniques (IMRT, IGRT, SBRT, SRS, SABR, BT, IORT, TSI, TBI) for every tumour regions and with various fractionation schedule. The new technologies allow high precision radiotherapy treatments in order to improve clinical outcomes and reduce toxicities. In particular, there is an on-going development in new technologies that it will increase hypofractionation treatments (SRS, SBRT, SABR) delivered by high precision techniques as Intensity Modulated therapy or volumetric arc therapy. In addition, there is the possibility to manage chemotherapy and biological drugs, in neoadjuvant, and adjuvant settings, concurrent or not with radiation therapy.
The Radiotherapy Unit is involved in many clinical trials. The clinical service is enhanced by a strong research programme also with recent implementation of Knowledge Based Oncology Labs (KBO Labs) for data mining and radiomics to develop predicitve models. A innovative information technology architecture called “BOA” (Beyond Ontology Awareness), has been developed for standardize data collection, to convert (legacy) archives of a center using a global data dictionary and replicates anonymously the clinical data into a cloud based large database. The KBO Labs provides another stage of the system, evolving toward a distributed learning approach. The KBO Labs has been involved in the development of predictive models or in the analysis of imaging features in the rectal and lung cancer and is currently involved in several clinical trials about standardize data collection: SAGE project (Medical data mining platform and Data Quality Assurance); VATE project (VAlidation of high TEchnology based on large database analysis by learning machine); INFRARED project (Development of predictive models and facilitation the publication of papers addressed to support evidences promoting the implementation of MRI IGRT technology-ViewRayTM in radiotherapy); PREMISE project (standardize data collection in patients treated with stereotactic radiotherapy); PROMETHEO project (PRediction models in Oral and PHaryngolaryngeal cancers for anti-EGFR based Therapy); COBRA project (standardize data collection in patients treated with brachytherapy).
