Coordinator: Dr Pasquale Frascione

This LINE includes three macro-areas:

• Biomarkers in Skin immuno-inflammatory Pathologies
• Skin Lipidomics in Skin Inflammatory Pathologies
• Biomarkers in Neoplastic Pathologies.

Biomarkers facilitate the characterisation and classification of dermato-oncological pathologies according to their severity, have a predictive value, and provide useful indications for the therapeutic approach and the follow-up.

Immunoreactive, inflammatory, or transformative processes can be triggered by various causes, which include changes in the skin microbiome, exposure to allergenic, irritant or mutagenic substances, changes in the barrier function of the skin, and changes in the protein or lipid component.

Different skin cells populations can become the target for inflammatory and/or transformative processes. 

Certain genes or genetic products that are known to cause or promote tumor growth are referred to as "tumor markers". Modern cancer therapy can establish the most appropriate treatment for each patient thanks to tumor markers and to the analysis of the genomic profile of the tumor.

In recent years, an increasing number of tumor markers have been discovered and new drugs have been developed to target specific tumor markers. With increased number of tumor markers known, personalised therapeutic options have also increased, allowing to intervene more and more specifically on the type of tumor of individual patients (personalised medicine). Biomarkers allow a stratification of the oncological disease for diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic purposes. The correlation and integration between the clinical course of the disease and the clinical-instrumental and molecular data represent the new frontier in the management of dermato-oncological patients. Environmental factors such as the exposure to mutagens (UVs, chemicals, viruses, etc.), behavioral and lifestyle habits can be studied in the general population through epidemiological models in order to identify subgroups at risk and define educational guidelines for the most fragile patients.

Goals:

• To identify cellular, molecular, and biohumoral markers in neoplastic pathologies, rare diseases associated with cancer predisposition, and rare tumors.
• To define instrumental algorithms of "at-risk" pigmented and non-pigmented skin lesions to correlate with clinical, microscopic, and molecular aspects 
• To identify useful multi-parametric indicators for the selection and monitoring of the response to target therapies.