Annalisa Comandatore, a General Surgery resident from the University of Pisa, has recently been receiving international attention for her work in pancreatic cancer at Cancer Center Amsterdam. She won The Young Investigator Award at the recent 54th European Pancreatic Club (EPC) Meeting for her abstract and oral presentation entitled “Unravelling the impact of exosomes in pancreatic cancer metastasis through a new organotypic-liver slide culture system.”
This is the second award that Annalisa received for her studies; in May 2022, she received the PanCAN Research Award for her presentation at the meeting of the Pancreas Club in San Diego, US.
Annalisa earned her medical degree at the University in Pisa in 2017. With a special interest in pancreatic cancer, she initiated several collaborative studies with Cancer Center Amsterdam researchers. Thanks to support by a Rotary Global Grant, Annalisa arranged a one-year fellowship at Cancer Center Amsterdam. Here, she bridged the gap between the operating room and laboratory to unravel the role of exosomes in the progression of pancreatic cancer metastasis in the liver. In particular, Annalisa established an innovative organotypic liver slide model to study exosome-educated pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells and showed that pre-treatment with exosomes increases the invasiveness of PDAC cells.
Her work was supervised by Professor Luca Morelli at the University of Pisa, and Professor Marc Besselink and Dr. Elisa Giovannetti at Cancer Center Amsterdam.
“My experience in Amsterdam has opened a new window of opportunity and has taught me that multidisciplinary teamwork and translational research offer the best results. I am grateful for this
opportunity, and for making me feel like a member of a big family of dedicated
professionals who share the same goals and the same vision, to improve cancer
care worldwide.” – Dr. Annalisa Comandatore
For more information, contact Annalisa Comandatore.
* Funding: The Rotary Global Grant is made possible by the Rotary Club of Pisa and the hosting Rotary Club of Zandvoort.
People involved at Cancer Center Amsterdam:
Prof. Marc Besselink, Dr. Annalisa Comandatore, and Dr. Elisa Giovannetti.