health – Progress in Research

iBeChange project kicks off

Posted on 01/02/202406/08/2024 by Erik Franco

iBeChange (Addressing Psychosocial and Lifestyle Risk Factors to Promote Primary Cancer Prevention: An Integrated Platform to Promote Behavioural Change) kicks off: the project funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme aims to design, develop and test an innovative platform, a user-oriented management system that enables people to behave in healthy and sustainable ways.

A working team from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano, coordinated by Prof. Francesco Trovò and Prof. Emilia Ambrosini, will participate in the project together with experts in clinical and health psychology, oncology, epidemiology, ICT, data science and health policy.

The project will combine practice-based and evidence-based knowledge from clinical psychology and behavioural change theories with the potential of adaptive digital technologies and artificial intelligence. Therefore, the iBeChange system will be able to dynamically observe, learn from user behaviour and provide personalised and effective healthcare interventions. The iBeChange project aims to help achieve the objectives of the European Plan Against Cancer and the European Code Against Cancer by improving long-term primary cancer prevention through information, support and empowerment of EU citizens.

The project consortium includes universities (University of Palermo, TU Eindhoven), medical institutes (European Institute of Oncology, Institut Catala d’Oncologia) and industries (Eurecat, Sporedata).

iHEART Simulator, a mathematical model of the heart for cardiac research

Posted on 25/09/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

A mathematical and computational model of the human heart, entirely developed at Politecnico di Milano and designed for studying coronary artery disease, is the focus of research published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. The project was born from collaboration between the MOX lab of the Department of Mathematics and the LaBS of the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering ‘Giulio Natta’ of Politecnico di Milano, and now presents the results of the iHEART Simulator.

iHEART Simulator is the result of years of research within the iHEART (Integrated Heart) project funded by the European Union through an ERC Advanced Grant, directed and coordinated by Professor Alfio Quarteroni.

What makes iHEART Simulator unique is its ability to combine the complex processes of electromechanics, haemodynamics and cardiac perfusion into a single platform. This level of integration offers unprecedented biophysical accuracy in the simulation of heart function and related diseases.

One of the most innovative aspects of this study is the application of this model to the analysis of coronary artery disease, such as ischaemia and acute myocardial infarction. Thanks to the iHEART Simulator, researchers will be able to study these diseases in a more detailed and accurate manner, paving the way for new therapies.

In collaboration with the IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele di Milano and Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan, the iHEART project has also developed mathematical models to understand cardiac arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia or atrial fibrillation. In addition, increasingly faster algorithms are in an advanced developed phase; they will allow to speed up the surgery decision-making process.

In collaboration with Ospedale Sacco di Milano, a model was also developed to guide cardiac surgeons in removing part of the interventricular septum to treat hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. Mathematical simulation is part of the pre-operative phase, and has been considered by doctors as an effective guidance tool for this delicate surgery.

In collaboration with Ospedale Santa Maria del Carmine in Rovereto (Trento province), a mathematical tool was created to optimise cardiac resynchronisation therapy. This reduces the time for mapping the left ventricle, which is necessary for implanting a resynchronisation device, and thus also reduces the patient’s exposure time in invasive treatments.

The results of this study were presented in a Plenary Lecture by Professor Quarteroni at ICIAM 2023 Conference in Tokyo, where he was awarded the prestigious Lagrange Prize by the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM).

Read the article online

Politecnico di Milano joins the EBRAINS research infrastructure

Posted on 28/06/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano joins EBRAINS, the new digital research infrastructure (RI), created by the EU-funded Human Brain Project (HBP), to foster brain-related research and to help translate the latest scientific discoveries into innovation in medicine and industry, for the benefit of patients and society.

The membership will give POLIMI the opportunity to co-design future iterations of EBRAINS’ cutting-edge tools and services. These state-of-the-art capabilities – which cover data sharing, atlasing, modelling, simulation, high-performance computing, and neurorobotics – aim to help European researchers to address major challenges in brain health, benefiting from insights into data science, brain organization, and artificial intelligence gathered from the EU Flagship Human Brain Project. The Human Brain Project (HBP) has been Europe’s largest brain science project, funded by the EU combining neuroscience, computing, and AI to study the brain and its diseases.

Becoming a member of EBRAINS is a strategic move for Politecnico di Milano. It allows us to promote our research on brain microcircuits and simulations, with a focus on learning mechanisms and neurorobotics. EBRAINS provides advanced tools, resources, and collaboration opportunities. It enhances our visibility and impact on an international scale,

says prof. Alessandra Pedrocchi, responsible for EBRAINS at Politecnico di Milano.

We are very pleased to welcome Politecnico di Milano as an associate member at EBRAINS. The university conducts high-level research on brain modelling, simulation, and neurorobotics, among other areas in neuroscience,

says Paweł Świeboda, CEO of EBRAINS.

The website of EBRAINS

Designing the hospitals of the future

Posted on 22/06/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The World Health Organization presented in Baku (Azerbaijan) the new design recommendations for hospitals to be built in the European region: the document was written at the Design & Health Lab of the Department of Architecture, Built environment and Construction Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano, coordinated by professor Stefano Capolongo.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of being prepared to deliver uninterrupted health services also in case of natural and human-induced disasters, emergencies and other social crises: for a hospital to remain functional during these situations, it must be designed with strong and flexible infrastructure, high resistance to hazards, and a focus on safety and comfort; it also have to ensure sustainable compliance with hygiene standards.

The technical brief collects guidelines for addressing different aspect of design: hospital localization; creation of green areas for the well-being of patients and medical staff; space accessibility; digitalization to improve service management; synergy between territorial hospital organizations; hospital hygiene; social, economical and ecological sustainability; prevention and security.

The document

Safe drinking water distribution with SafeCREW

Posted on 12/05/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The second meeting of the SafeCREW project, funded by the European Union (EU) within the Horizon Europe program, has just taken place at Politecnico di Milano. SafeCREW aims to support the novel EU Drinking Water Directive (DWD) by generating advanced knowledge and developing tools and guidelines for disinfected and non-disinfected drinking water supply systems.

Provision of safe drinking water in sufficient quantity is essential for human health and concerns 4 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as defined by United Nations. Both surface water and groundwater are essential resources for drinking water supply throughout the European Union. While water quantity, threatened by increasingly frequent periods of drought, receives much attention, the threats of climate change impacts on water quality for drinking water supply, on the treatment processes necessary for its purification and on the maintenance of drinking water quality along the distribution network are currently inadequately considered.

Despite the long-term experience with the reliable operation of drinking water supply systems (DWSS), the climate change impacts on water quality require to face a number of new challenges: the (future) need for disinfection, the microbial stability in the distribution network, and the formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs), with potential adverse effects on human health.

Utilities need to address short-term demands for improved risk management arising from the current DWD, as well the long-term challenges of climate change impacts on water quality, minimizing the risks for final consumers.

Currently, DWSS are very diversified by source of supply, purification processes, characteristics of the distribution networks, so that they must address different concerns to supply drinking water safe for human health. SafeCREW faces these critical issues, focusing on disinfection, its consequences, and the minimization of disinfectant dosages and DBPs formation, and moreover it addresses the potential need for disinfection in currently non-disinfected DWSS.

Four case studies in three European countries were chosen as representative (Hamburg, Berlin, Milano, Tarragona) to develop novel technological and modelling tools for drinking water treatment and distribution management, with a multidisciplinary approach, which allows to act on the entire DWSS, from the supply source, via purification treatments, up to the final distribution.

More in detail, chemical and microbiological water quality characterization methods will be improved, novel data sets on the occurrence and concentration of so far unknown DBPs will be created, evaluation protocols for materials in contact with water will be identified, innovative and sustainable treatment solutions will be developed to actively respond to the identified threats, the management of distribution networks will be optimized, which can no longer be seen only as passive infrastructures for water distribution, and finally risk assessment procedures will be defined that integrate the effects of mixtures of chemical and microbiological contaminants.

SafeCREW will provide transferable tools to end-users (water utilities, national/EU regulators, researchers, enterprises), including:

reliable methods to evaluate microbial stability, characterize natural organic matter (NOM), detect DBPs and account for their human health toxicity;
experimental protocols to select proper materials in contact with disinfected and non-disinfected water;
monitoring and modelling tools, also exploiting machine learning, for real-time optimization of DWSS management;
an integrated risk assessment framework to guide future interventions which ensure that both disinfected and non-disinfected DWSS can continue providing safe drinking water in the face of climate change.

SafeCREW will increase the preparedness of the EU water sector for challenges arising from climate change and will support the EU’s leading position in science-based policy making for drinking water consumer protection.

SafeCREW partnership includes 11 European organizations. In addition to Politecnico di Milano, DVGW (German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water) Research Center (Leader) and Tutech Innovation GmbH, both at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) (Germany), Kompetenzzentrum Wasser Berlin (KWB) (Germany), BioDetection Systems b.v. (BDS) (The Netherlands), EURECAT Technologic de Catalunya (Spain), Umweltbundesamt (UBA) (Germany), Consorci d’Aigües de Tarragona (CAT) (Spain), Metropolitana Milanese SpA (Italy), Umweltforschungszentrum Leipzig (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, Germany) and Multisensor Systems Ltd. (MSS, United Kingdom).

Politecnico di Milano brings in SafeCREW multidisciplinary skills thanks to the collaboration of researchers from four Departments: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (DICA, prof. Manuela Antonelli), Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “G. Natta” (DCMC, prof. Carlo Punta), Department of Mathematics (DMAT, prof. Ilenia Epifani) and Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB, prof. Francesco Trovò).

SafeCREW website

Diagnosing prostate cancer using an “electronic nose”

Posted on 14/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Diag-Nose experimental project, the result of a collaboration between Humanitas and the Politecnico di Milano, aims to develop a method for diagnosing prostate cancer that is non-invasive and more accurate than traditional procedures.

It is an electronic nose that is capable of detecting a tumour by analysing a urine sample and identifying specific volatile molecules.

The results of the first trials, which have been published in the International Journal of Urology, are encouraging: the test correctly determines the presence of a tumour in cancer patients in 85.2% of cases and correctly gives a negative result for healthy patients in 79.1% of cases. The accuracy is significantly better than that of traditional diagnostic methods; indeed, biopsies have a tumour detection rate of 48.5% at most.

Furthermore, the prototype has other significant benefits when compared to a biopsy: in addition to being an invasive procedure, biopsies have a particularly high rate of false negatives for early-stage tumours due to the fact that only a small portion of tissue is collected and analysed.

The study, conducted between March 2020 and March 2021 at Humanitas Mater Domini in Castellanza and the Humanitas Research Hospital in Rozzano, involved 174 people divided into two groups: 88 patients with prostate cancer of varying grades and stages confirmed by a histological examination, and 86 people in a “control” group comprising men and women of different ages with no history of the disease who had undergone medical examinations. A urine sample was collected from each person and analysed at the laboratories of Professor Laura Capelli at the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering, whose research group was also responsible for building the prototype of the instrument.

The electronic nose is the evolution of a study conducted in 2012 by Humanitas with the collaboration of the Military Veterinary Centre in Grosseto (Cemivet) and supported by the Italian Ministry of Defence, which revealed how dogs, once properly trained, are able to detect prostate cancer by smelling patients’ urine.

The electronic nose developed as part of the Diag-Nose project is therefore a prototype created by reproducing the canine sense of smell, built using a series of sensors that are capable of analysing the volatile substances released into the air by urine samples.

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

A revolution in drug discovery: advanced computer-aided drug design

Posted on 08/06/202111/10/2021 by admin

Tag: Supercomputing, VirtualScreening, HPC, health, COVID-19
Researchers: Cristina Silvano, Gianluca Palermo
Department: DEIB – Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering

A drug has been found which is able to counter the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for COVID-19. The drug in question is Raxilofene and it has been identified thanks to the European Exscalate4CoV project, supported by the European Horizon 2020 project for research and innovation, with the collaboration of Politecnico di Milano, Dompé Farmaceutici, Cineca and another 15 partners throughout Europe.

Exscalate4CoV uses the fastest pharmaceutical research platform in the world, created with the collaboration of professors Gianluca Palermo and Cristina Silvano from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of Politecnico di Milano. From an archive of about 500 billion molecules, the EXSCALATE platform (EXaSCale smArt pLatform Against paThogEns) is able to select the molecules that meet certain compatibility requirements with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Thanks to the CINECA supercomputers, researchers have analyzed over 10 million pharmaceutical molecules, identifying in Raxilofene the most promising molecule to inhibit the replication of coronavirus inside human cells. In vitro tests have confirmed the results processed by the platform. Raxilofene has been used for years against osteoporosis and is well-tolerated by the human body: this will make it possible to rapidly move forwards to the clinical test phase on patients affected by COVID-19. “One of the most computationally complex phases was the 3D modeling of the virus proteins, which was unknown until just a few months ago” comments Palermo. “Now we have a good model and the Exscalate platform is able to compare it with over 500 billion molecules in just a few weeks, identifying the molecules able to inhibit the virus from replicating”. With the start of the clinical study, the first phase of the project can now be considered over. Since the approval process to test the drug on people has been completed, the IRCSS Lazzaro Spallanzani in Rome and IRCSS Humanitas in Milan research hospitals have been carrying out trials on 450 patients since the end of October. During the second phase of the project, almost 500 billion molecules will be analyzed, many of these have never been used and are not present in nature. While the wait for the results continues, if one of these compounds proves to be interesting, moving forwards to the clinical phase will take time: tests to verify whether a molecule is toxic for humans can take between 5 and 10 years. This is why the project has prioritized the analysis of drugs already being used for other pathologies.

At the time of writing, researchers are carrying out the largest virtual molecule screening experiment in the world. The Politecnico di Milano team is at the forefront of this experiment, which will be developed using the two most powerful supercomputers in Europe: the ENI HPC5 and the CINECA Marconi-100 system. 70 billion molecules evaluated on 15 active sites of 12 SARS-CoV-2 proteins for a total of over one thousand billion evaluations. This number goes well beyond the “just” 2 billion evaluations carried out at the Oak Ridge National Lab in the United States on a single protein for the same reason, using the second most powerful supercomputer in the world, and the billion evaluations made by the same DOMPE-POLIMI-CINECA work group against the Zika virus, which at the time were considered unique experiments. “The EXSCALATE platform has the peculiar characteristic of being designed from the outset for situations like the one we are living through at the moment, where urgent calculations must be deployed at speeds that only supercomputers can achieve. At the moment, we are carrying out an experiment in only a few days which as little time ago as last year, would have taken tens of months” comments Palermo.

The project is coordinated by Dompè Farmaceutici alongside a multidisciplinary team and aims to continue to collaborate with Politecnico di Milano and CINECA during every phase to develop the EXSCALATE platform, thus accelerating the computational process in the search for new drugs and maximizing the efficiency of the new generation of supercomputers. “However, we are currently directly involved with just the computational challenge which we are really excited about thanks to its uniqueness, but no less important will be the next phase when the research carried out will be more than just an end in itself. The data produced by the simulation will be analyzed by Dompé Farmaceutici to identify interesting molecules that may be active on numerous proteins, and will also be made available to the scientific community”. Thanks to the recent investment decided by Italy and Europe, in October it was announced that a new supercomputer called Leonardo will be installed at CINECA next year, which should reach 250 thousand billion calculations per second (petaflop), 10 times more than the current rate. The Politecnico di Milano team is already geared up for this new challenge, also thanks to a new European project called LIGATE (LIgand Generator AT Exsascale), which will see the DOMPE – POLIMI – CINECA team working together for a further 3 years.

THE PROJECT TEAM