Abstract
In Italy, asbestos has been extensively used from 1945 to 1992. The Eternit settlements were widespread across Italy, and Ancona was one of the cities where asbestos was highly used. Ancona University was founded in 1969 and the Occupational Medicine Institute as part of Ancona hospital in collaboration with the Clinic Oncology mainly focused on asbestos-related diseases, both benign (asbestosis and pleural plaques) and malignant diseases such as malignant mesothelioma and lung cancer. Far in 1995, Governa and colleagues first evaluated ‘in vitro’ the biological effect of asbestos fibers. The studies carried on the asbestos carcinogenicity further contributed to identify biomarkers as indicators of cancer risk. Recently, new molecular biomarkers have been identified which can detect the malignancy at early stage, and the biomarker combination further improved the performance in the diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma. The prognostic performance status, and response to first-line chemotherapy was also evaluated in asbestos-related malignancies, and new molecular targets and therapeutic approach have been proposed.
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Santarelli, L. et al. (2020). The Formidable Metamorphosis of the Salamander’s Wool: Asbestos from Eternal Material to Awful Pathologies. In: Longhi, S., et al. The First Outstanding 50 Years of “Università Politecnica delle Marche”. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33832-9_20
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