Breast cancer: this is how Enea is working on new treatments with minimal side effects and lower costs

The aim is to develop new treatments for breast cancer with minimal side effects and at reduced cost. This is the objective of the Pulsar research project, to which ENEA has decided to allocate funds from the ‘5 per mille’ scheme for scientific research.

Specifically, the research aims to improve treatments for breast cancer, with a particular focus on the most aggressive and treatment-resistant forms: for example, triple-negative breast cancer, which is characterised by a sort of ‘biological cloak of invisibility’ that hinders the body’s defences.

“The expected results,” says Arianna Casciati, the project’s creator and a researcher at the Red Biotechnology Laboratory, “will enable anti-cancer drugs to be delivered in a more targeted manner, increasing their effectiveness and reducing their toxicity.”

The approach devised by researchers at ENEA ‘combines electrochemotherapy and immunotherapy based on interleukin-12, a molecule capable of reactivating the anti-tumour immune response’. Not only that, but the project also involves the use of two of the research agency’s patents: ‘One relates to a system that uses ultra-short electric fields for the treatment of tumours,’ explain ENEA, ‘and the other is dedicated to the production of interleukin-12 via plants’.

Electrochemotherapy is a clinically validated technology that uses controlled electrical pulses to temporarily increase the permeability of cancer cells, facilitating the entry of chemotherapy drugs and enhancing their effectiveness. Immunotherapy, on the other hand, ‘harnesses the immune system to recognise and fight cancer cells. In this context, the crucial role of interleukin-12 in reactivating and enhancing the anti-tumour immune response has been highlighted. However, the clinical application of this molecule is still limited by significant systemic toxicity (causing high fever or even liver damage) and high production costs’. The researcher emphasises that ‘thanks to the Pharmagreen platform developed by ENEA, we are able to produce this molecule using engineered plants, an innovative system that makes the production of biopharmaceuticals safer, more sustainable and more cost-effective’. This ‘innovative’ approach involves combining the administration of interleukin-12 with the application of short electrical pulses directly to the tumour site, either as monotherapy or in combination with a chemotherapeutic agent. ‘This strategy,’ the researcher concludes, ‘allows us to maximise the concentration of the molecule in the tumour target, making the tumour microenvironment hostile to the growth and spread of cancer cells, whilst reducing systemic side effects.’