Erik Franco – Pagina 13 – Progress in Research

New cancer therapy using neutrons

Posted on 04/07/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

A new experimental cancer treatment will be developed in Italy by virtue of the partnership between the National Center for Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO), the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Pavia. In 2024, an accelerator for the production of neutron beams will be installed at CNAO in Pavia. It has been designed for the purposes of clinical research activity: it will be used to develop Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) which consists of irradiating tumour cells with neutron beams after having treated the patient with a medication containing an atom of a particular chemical element: Boron-10.

Boro-10 accumulates in tumour cells to a significantly greater extent than in normal cells due to the greater metabolic demand of the former. Irradiation of the area containing the neoplasm with neutrons leads to an interaction between the neutrons and the Boro-10: the nuclear reaction is selective since it only impacts the nucleus of Boron-10, giving off energy that is capable of destroying tumour cells. The process is expected to be very effective in treating particularly complex tumours. This technology is made available by Tae Life Sciences, a US company that has chosen to invest in Italian research.

Doctors, physicists, radiobiologists and engineers from CNAO, INFN, the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Pavia will contribute in their respective fields of expertise in order to begin pre-clinical and clinical trials of BNCT and to obtain the CE marking that certifies that the medical device complies with essential patient safety requirements.

The fight against cancer represents one of the greatest challenges of our time. The expertise deployed by the Politecnico di Milano will prove to be an important ally. Increasingly advanced technology will play a central role: from robotics to data analysis, from image processing systems to mathematical models, from predictive systems to machine learning,
Ferruccio Resta, the Politecnico’s Rector

HYPER-5G: developing improved positioning systems

Posted on 27/06/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Precise positioning will undergo exponential growth with the advent of autonomous vehicles, drones, robots and the technological development of smart devices, cities and industries. The transition from the professional to the consumer sphere will necessarily lead to the demand for precise positioning capabilities in both outdoor and indoor, open-sky and urban areas.

Politecnico di Milano is participating in the project HYPER-5G, HYbrid Positioning Engine Running on 5G and GNSS, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), under the Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP).

The HYPER-5G project aims at studying, designing and developing the algorithms and systems needed to implement a precise positioning engine to jointly use multi-constellation GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) and 5G observations, also exploiting GNSS PPP-RTK techniques.

The project aims to merge GNSS, the state-of-the-art technology for positioning applications, and 5G, the new generation of cellular communication networks, for positioning purposes with the goal of overcoming the limits that individually characterize the two technologies and augmenting the overall performance.

The 5G-GNSS data fusion algorithm planned in HYPER-5G represents a solution for precise positioning scalable to an unlimited number of users with large-scale coverage.

The project consortium includes GRed, algoWatt and Politecnico di Milano, which brings in a multi-disciplinary team:

IoTLab, an interdepartmental laboratory of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering – DIG (Prof. Monica Nicoli) and the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – DEIB (Prof. Mattia Brambilla), with expertise on 5G positioning.
Geolab, an interdepartmental laboratory of the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering – DICA, Aerospace Science and Technology – DAER, Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering – DABC, Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – DEIB, Energy – DENG, Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering – DIG, of which Prof. Ludovico Biagi (DICA) brings expertise on GNSS techniques.

The research on 5G positioning is also supported by the collaboration with Vodafone Italia.

HYPER-5G projectproject website

Cover image adapted from © ESA image

Neighborhood networks for the recovery, distribution and upgrading of food surplus

Posted on 27/06/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The pandemic has put many citizens in difficulty: now they need concrete help in order to be able to do grocery shopping.

The SOSpesa project aims to create a neighborhood network, made up of local actors, in charge of mapping food flows, recovering and transforming food surplus and, finally, offering it to disadvantaged people at controlled prices.

The network is based in the NoLo neighborhood in Milan, where the initiative “SpesaSospesa a Nolo” has already been put into practice. Starting from this experience, the SOSpesa project will study and develop a functioning model at local level for the recovery, distribution and upgrading of food surplus, identifying innovative solutions and defining which technological innovations can support the system.

The departments of Design, Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering and Electronics, Information and Bioengineering are involved in the project, together with many partners: Municipality of Milan, Food Policy Office; P.I.Nolo; MEMO54; RECUP; Casa Nolo; Qubì Loreto network (funded by Cariplo Foundation); “La terra che non c’è” project (funded by Fondazione Comunità); Gorillas (online supermarket).

SOSpesa is a 2021 Polisocial Award winning project. Polisocial Award is the initiative that supports high social impact research at the Politecnico di Milano thanks to the funds from the 5×1000 donations (a fraction of the personal income tax each Italian citizen can donate to support a non-profit organisation). The 2021 edition was dedicated to the theme “Equity and Recovery”.

THE PROJECT TEAM

Davide Fassi, Department of Design (principal investigator)
Giulia Bartezzaghi, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering (project manager)
Anna Meroni, Department of Design
Francesco Vergani, Department of Design
Paola Garrone, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Annalaura Silvestro, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Maurizio Magarini, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering
Davide Scazzoli, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering

A 4D digital geographical atlas of the Appia Antica Archaeological Park

Posted on 23/06/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Appia Antica Archaeological Park (PAAA) and the Politecnico di Milano have launched a vast organic and systematic survey and digitization project in the Park area with the aim of giving shape to a modern geographical atlas that is configured as a ‘4D living digital twin’. A model intended for experts, curators and users, to be expanded and monitored over time.

The work is carried out by the GIcarus-ABCLabinterdisciplinary survey and representation laboratory of the Politecnico di Milano with the coordination of the PAAA.

The Appia Antica Archaeological Park was established in 2016 and is the largest protected urban area in Europe, with 4,500 hectares of landscape with archaeological areas that follow one another, along the more than 16 km of the Via Appia Antica ‘Regina Viarum’ .

In less than a year, the first Roman complexes and infrastructures have been digitized: the Claudius-Anio Novus Imperial Aqueduct, an 11.7 km stretch of the Via Appia Antica, the Tomb of Cecilia Metella, the Imperial Villa of the Quintili, as well as some museum sculptures.

The result was a first real 4D digital geographic atlas of over 200,000 images and 20 TB of data and models.

“A digital twin that includes the past and future to n-dimensions, made up of information models to support projects and conservative monitoring, seismic vulnerability plans, that is connectable to IOT WiFi sensors. Implementable, updatable and searchable, it allows synchronic and diachronic correlations, adding knowledge as it grows. Re-usable for the dissemination of contents and interactive, immersive and remote use”, explains Professor Raffaella Brumana of GIcarus ABCLab.

The high-precision survey was carried out using terrestrial and portable laser scanners (TLSs – Terrestrial Laser Scanners, and MMS – Mobile Mapping System), terrestrial and aerial photogrammetry, drones, spherical cameras and multispectral sensors and allowed a 4-dimensional HBIM model (space and time) to be obtained which, when correlated to historical information, materials and sensors for monitoring instability and decay, makes it possible to compare the construction techniques that have occurred over the centuries.

The project also envisages the development of an interactive XR (eXtended Reality) platform for the remote dissemination of all contents, which will be tested as the digitization products become available and which will also allow the virtual relocation of nearby and distant collections. digitized sculptures, and to simulate portions that have disappeared starting from the traces found to help their understanding.

The project team

All activities were coordinated by Architect Simone Quilici, Director of the PAAA, together with the technical and scientific staff of the Park, in particular the Archaeologists Stefano Roascio, Francesca Romana Paolillo, the Architects Luigi Oliva, Clara Spallino, Aura Picchione, Michele Reginaldi and Raffaella Rocchetta, the Restorer Sara Iovine.

The Scientific Coordinators for the Politecnico di Milano are Raffaella Brumana and Mattia Previtali, Fabrizio Banfi. Fabio Roncoroni,Chiara Stanga, Dario Attico, Luca Bertola and Marzia Gabriele also collaborated.

DIANA: studying drugs for brain by miniaturized platform

Posted on 22/06/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano has developed an innovative technological device, for industrial use, aimed at the study of new drugs for the treatment of brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. This is the main result of the European project DIANA (Organ-on-a-chip Drug screenIng device to tArget braiN diseAse), funded in 2019 by the Proof-of Concept call of the ERC (European Research Council).

DIANA brought together universities and companies in a consortium between the Politecnico di Milano and the innovative SME Neuro-Zone srl, specialized in discovery activities to support the development of drugs in the field of neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. The project was enhanced by the involvement of Diego Albani, researcher in neuroscience at the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS in Milan, an expert in innovative pharmacological approaches for neurodegenerative diseases.

The Chip4DBrain platform developed by DIANA is based on a state-of-the-art technology known as” organ-on-a-chip “that allows you to reproduce complex organ functions on systems the size of a microscope slide.
Carmen Giordano, Professor of Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano.

This is a further step towards the development of evolved in vitro models, which can reproduce some of the key characteristics of biological systems, such as the three-dimensionality or the simultaneous presence of different types of cells, just as it is in our brain, to evaluate the potential of a new drug to cross the blood brain barrier and effectively target the brain.

This innovative miniaturized platform is able to integrate in a single in vitro system the blood-brain barrier, which protects our brain from the aggression of molecules and external agents, and a model of brain tissue.

Chip4D Brain has also allowed the implementation of cellular models of the blood brain and brain barrier, already in use at Neuro-Zone, making them closer to the biological profile of a patient thanks to the use of commercial human stem cells.

In an international scenario where the restrictions or ethical assessments towards the use of animal models also in the field of neuroscience are very complex, predictive and advanced in vitro models are increasingly urgent.

The mission that DIANA has faced is highly topical: in the coming decades, brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease will have a significant increase, but unfortunately the development of effective drugs requires a ten-year process, investments of billions of euros to facing a failure rate, which for Alzheimer’s disease alone is close to 95%.

DIANA project factsheet

The project DIANA has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under Grant Agreement No. 899431.

Researchers at Politecnico synthesise a new material

Posted on 21/06/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The SupraBioNano Lab (SBNLab) at the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, in partnership with the University of Bologna and the Aalto University of Helsinki (Finland) has, for the first time, synthesised a superfluorinated gold nanocluster, made up of a core of only 25 gold atoms, to which 18 branch-structured fluorinated molecules are linked.

The metal clusters are an innovative class of very complex nanomaterial, characterised by ultra-small dimensions (<2nm) and peculiar chemical-physical properties such as luminescence and catalytic activity, which encourage its application in various scientific fields of high importance in relation to modern global challenges. These include precision medicine, in which metal nanoclusters are used as innovative probes for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, and the energy transition, where they are applied as efficient catalysers for the production of green hydrogen.

The crystallisation of metal nanoclusters offers the possibility of obtaining high-purity samples, allowing their fine atomic structure to be determined; however, at present this remains a very difficult process to control. The methodologies developed in this study promoted the crystallisation of nanoclusters, allowing their atomic structure to be determined. The end result is the structural description of the most complex fluorinated nano-object ever reported.

The atomic structure has been determined by means of x-ray diffraction at the Sincrotrone Elettra in Trieste. It will soon be possible to study the structure of these advanced nanomaterials at the Politecnico di Milano, where – thanks also to the grant from the Region of Lombardy – Next-GAME (Next-Generation Advanced Materials), a laboratory dedicated to the use of state-of-the-art x-ray instruments to characterise crystals, nanoparticles and colloids, is being established.

Among the authors of the study were Prof. Pierangelo Metrangolo, Prof. Giancarlo Terraneo, Prof. Valentina Dichiarante, Prof. Francesca Baldelli Bombelli, Dr. Claudia Pigliacelli (SBNLab); professor Giulio Cerullo, from the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Physics, also contributed to the study, looking at the nanocluster’s optical characteristics and demonstrating the fluorinated binders’ impact on the gold core’s optical activity.

The study on Nature Communication

Equity and quality for childhood. Guidelines for an integrated 0-6 years support system

Posted on 06/06/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

EQUI_06 is a multidisciplinary project involving the Departments of Architecture and Urban Studies (DASTU), Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering (DIG) and Design of the Politecnico di Milano. It aims at defining guidelines and general rules for the creation of integrated preschool service hubs in urban areas facing educational poverty.

Following an in-depth pilot study of needs and resources relating to early childhood (0-6 years), the project aims to promote principles of equity and quality.

Defining guidelines and general rules for the creation of integrated preschool service hubs, following an in-depth pilot study of needs and resources relating to early childhood (0-6 years).

THE PROJECT TEAM

Stefania Sabatinelli, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (principal investigator)
Marta Cordini, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (project manager)
Carolina Pacchi, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
Cristina Renzoni, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
Paola Savoldi, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
Marta Cannistrà, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Mara Soncin, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Filippo Bolzoni, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Ambra Borin, Department of Design
Luisa Collina, Department of Design
Laura Galluzzo, Department of Design
Claudia Mastrantoni, Department of Design

EQUI_06 is one of the high social impact projects awarded in the 2021 edition of Polisocial Award, dedicated to the theme “Equity and Recovery”: the winning projects are financed by funds from the 5×1000 donations (a fraction of the personal income tax each Italian citizen can donate to support a non-profit organisation).

AI-based personalized medical care for lung cancer patients

Posted on 30/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

I³LUNG is a new research initiative that aims to create a cutting-edge decision-making tool to aid both clinicians and patients in selecting the best lung cancer treatment plan, tailored to the specific needs and situation of each individual patient.

Lung cancer was the leading cause for cancer deaths in men and the second for women in 2020, with 370000 deaths in Europe alone. The consortium has thought out and developed this project to address the primary unmet clinical need in the field of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is the lack of biomarkers predicting the response of affected patients to immunotherapy (IO)-based treatments.

The project will use artificial intelligence (AI), in particular deep and machine learning methodologies (DL and ML) to analyze a wide range of information such as baseline clinical features, radiomics, and available biological characteristics of the tumor.

I³LUNG and its partners will have a timeframe of 5 years and a €10M budget to turn their project’s hypothesis in a tangible tool and a new clinical reality. I3LUNG is the first platform enrolling such an important number of patients in both a retrospective (2,000) and prospective (200) manner including such a diversity of multiomic data, arising as an innovative and promising technology to provide an answer to the unmet clinical need of translational research data integration and AI use.

This project is envisioned to both generate novel therapeutic guidelines for clinical practice in lung cancer and support the growth of digital diagnostic tools. AI will push the standard of care towards a more personalized approach for each individual cancer patient. If successful, the approach presented in I³LUNG could in the near future be extended to other cancer types.

The team of the Politecnico di Milano, which combines computer science and biomedical engineering experts, aims to study together with medical partners if and how Artificial Intelligence can become an actor in the complex path of therapy selection. The goal is to develop artificial intelligent solutions that are not only capable of accuracy and precision, but also an understandable interlocutor, at the service of clinical experts, their knowledge and experience and worthy of trust for patients.
Prof. Alessandra Pedrocchi of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, project coordinator for our university

The partners in the consortium I³LUNG are:

Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori(INT, Milano, Italia) with Dr Arsela Prelaj as coordinator of the Consortium
Politecnico di Milano(POLIMI, Milano, Italia)
Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri (IRFMN, Milano, Italia)
Istituto Europeo di Oncologia (IEO; Milano, Italia)
ML Cube(Milano, Italia)
LungenClinic Grosshansdorf GmbH (GHD, Grosshansdorf, Germania)
Universitaetsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE, Amburgo, Germania)
Vall d’Hebron Instituteof Oncology (VHIO, Barcellona, Spagna)
Medica Scientia Innovation Research (MEDSIR, Barcellona, Spagna & New Jersey, USA)
Metropolitan Hospital (MH, Pireo, Grecia)
Shaare Zedek Medical Center (SZMC, Gerusalemme, Israele)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL, Leuven, Belgio)
Institutet for Halso-OCH Sjukvardsekonomi Aktiebolag (IHE, Lund, Svezia)
University of Chicago (UOC, Chicago, USA)
Aalborg Universitet (AAU, Aalborg, Danimarca)
Lung Cancer Europe (LUCE, Bern, Svizzera)

Programming reliable infrastructures using an Infrastructure-as-Code approach in a secure framework

Posted on 26/05/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano is one of the partners of the European project PIACERE, funded under the Horizon 2020 programme; the project, led by the Spanish research centre Tecnalia, has a three-year duration and brings together academic and industrial partners from four European countries.

The main objective of PIACERE is the programming of reliable infrastructures using an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach in a secure framework.

PIACERE aims to increase the productivity of DevOps teams in the development and operation of IaC by provisioning an integrated DevSecOps framework. DevOps teams can program IaC as if they were programming any software application.

Another key innovation of PIACERE is a complete toolkit for verifying and checking the reliability of the code.

Professor Elisabetta Di Nitto – Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – is the project manager at the Politecnico di Milano.

The PIACERE project website

THE PROJECT TEAM

The project team

THE PROJECT TEAM

THE PROJECT TEAM

The partners in the consortium I3LUNG are:

The partners in the consortium I³LUNG are: