6^th November at 12:00
Onsite event
in Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Autumn 2025 program

Prof. Silvia Giordano, University of Torino Medical School, Italy
Gastric cancer in the age of precision oncology: new opportunities to improve treatment

Host: Silvia Gramolelli (Silvia.Gramolelli@abo.fi)

Coffee and sandwich served at 11:45, first come first serve!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have a lunch and discuss with Prof. Giordano after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in a friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

Altered regulation of tyrosine kinase receptors is frequent in solid tumors and it is often associated with the acquisition of an aggressive phenotype. Thus, therapies targeting these receptors have been proposed as molecular approaches to treat human cancers. The main problem with these therapies is the onset of resistance, which leads to treatment failure. It is therefore important to understand the mechanisms of resistance to molecular targeted therapies, in an effort to optimize the outcome of the treatments. Giordano group aims to study the molecular mechanisms that allow tumor cells to become insensitive to molecular targeted therapies. They focus on the study of gastric cancer that is the world’s third leading cause of cancer mortality. Giordano lab generated a platform of more than 70 patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) that recapitulate the heterogeneity of this disease. Giordano lab aims to genetically dissect the gastric tumor landscape in order to investigate mechanisms involved in sensitivity/resistance to targeted therapies against receptor tyrosine kinases.

Selected publications

Heat shock factor 2 regulates oncogenic gamma-herpesvirus gene expression by remodeling the chromatin at the ORF50 and BZLF1 promoter. Cutrone L, Djupenström H, Peltonen J, Martinez Klimova E, Corso S, Giordano S, Sistonen L, Gramolelli S. PLoS Pathog. 2025 Apr 17;21(4):e1013108

BRCA2 Germline Mutations Identify Gastric Cancers Responsive to PARP Inhibitors. Petrelli A, Rizzolio S, …, Degiuli M, Baiocchi GL, Amisano MF, Ferrero A, Marchiò C, Corso S, Giordano S. Cancer Res. 2023 May 15;83(10):1699-1710

Biological and targeting differences between the rare KRAS A146T and canonical KRAS mutants in gastric cancer models. Puliga E, De Bellis C, Vietti Michelina S, Capeloa T, Migliore C, Orrù C, Baiocchi GL, De Manzoni G, Pietrantonio F, Reddavid R, Fumagalli Romario U, Ambrogio C, Corso S, Giordano S. Gastric Cancer. 2024 May;27(3):473-483

HER2 Copy Number and Resistance Mechanisms in Patients with HER2-positive Advanced Gastric Cancer Receiving Initial Trastuzumab-based Therapy in JACOB Trial. Pietrantonio F, Manca P, Bellomo SE, Corso S, Raimondi A, Berrino E, Morano F, Migliore C, Niger M, Castagnoli L, Pupa SM, Marchiò C, Di Bartolomeo M, Restuccia E, Lambertini C, Tabernero J, Giordano S. Clin Cancer Res. 2023 Feb 1;29(3):571-580

General information

• You can download and save all the autumn 2025 FoS-seminars to your calendar from here: https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars, print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Autumn 2025 image credits to Kari Kaunisto: Sahlberg family collections, Biodiversity unit, University of Turku