Volume 36, no. 1, January 2023. Lung and colorectal cancer: unexpected common strategies of therapy resistance. Istopsmoking the new web platform of the National Institute of Health. Trends in the pharmaceutical falsification: activities of the National Centre for the Control and Evaluation of Medicines. EDUISS NEWS Insert

Abstracts:

Lung and colorectal cancer: unexpected common strategies of therapy resistance
A common property of cells in all living kingdoms, from bacteria to humans, is the ability to block the normal life cycle and enter a dormant state called quiescence. During this state, cells have the ability to survive for long periods of time even in adverse environmental conditions, and to resume their growth when favourable conditions arise again. Quiescence is also exploited by cancer cells in order to escape anticancer therapies and regenerate the tumor upon treatment interruption. Researchers at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (the National Institute of Health in Italy) found out that quiescent cancer cells of colon and lung cancers implement common molecular programs to maintain quiescence and survive treatment. The study of tumor quiescence is fundamental to understand the bases of therapy resistance and to develop new therapeutic strategies aimed at preventing tumor recurrence.

Istopsmoking the new web platform of the National Institute of Health
The National Centre on Addiction and Doping of the Italian National Institute of Health, thanks to the funding of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control of the Ministry of Health, has created the new web platform Istopsmoking, with of raising awareness  smokers to quit and facilitating the choice of the process best suited to their needs. The platform offers information, support and useful strategies for a cessation process that can also be followed independently to those who have decided to quit smoking.

Trends in the pharmaceutical falsification: activities of the National Centre for the Control and Evaluation of Medicine
Trends in the pharmaceutical falsification market are summarised in this article: from false medicines to health products (food supplements, cosmetics, medical devices) illegally tampered with active pharmaceutical ingredients or illegal substances. Moreover, in the last years medicine falsification also involved biological and biotechnological medicines (ex. monoclonal antibodies) and pharmaceutical active ingredients. In May 2022, the Official Medicines Control Laboratory (OMCL) of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, ISS (National Institute of Health in Italy), which has been active on this issue at the National and European levels for many years, hosted the Symposium “Combating Falsified and Other Illegal Medicines - 4th Symposium for OMCLs: New Trends, New Frontiers”. The event provided significant opportunities for information sharing among the European laboratories in charge of testing the quality of medicines.