Cardio-oncology

The term cardio-oncology primarily refers to the investigation of the toxicity that antitumor therapies may exert on the cardiovascular (CV) system. The goal of the WG is to answer the question of how oncological drugs and radiotherapy can be safely administered to patients with cancer, with the least CV side effects possible. Furthermore, cardio-oncology seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying the CV toxicity of antineoplastic treatments, in order to discover ways to prevent them and improve the development pipeline of anticancer agents. Recently, the field of cardio-oncology has widened to include the study of the interaction between cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer. This is a clinically relevant, topical problem, in that prognosis is worse when CVD and cancer coexist than when they occur separately, and the two diseases hinder each other’s management. In addition, the concomitance of CVD and cancer is the focus of translational research, such as the one aiming at dissecting the pathways linking heart failure to malignancy or the one examining the association between clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential and CV events. In line with the WG aims, 9 Institutes of the Cardiology Network are participating in the Carditox-CT project. Left ventricular dysfunction is one of the commonest manifestations of the cardiotoxicity of anti-neoplastic treatments and was shown to be predicted by changes in the extracellular volume (ECV) of the left ventricle, as measured by magnetic resonance imaging. Cardiotox-CT will determine whether the ECV, as assessed by chest CT performed as part of the oncological follow-up, also correlates with the development of left ventricular dysfunction.

Active projects:

• Early identification of cardiotoxicity during chemotherapy by calculation of extracellular volume (ECV) obtained by CT examination – Carditox-CT study – (PI: G. Pontone; CENTRO CARDIOLOGICO MONZINO

Coordinator:

Prof. Pietro Ameri

Institute:

IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino

Partecipants:

CENTRO CARDIOLOGICO MONZINO Giulio Pompilio – MULTIMEDICA Adriana Albini – AUXOLOGICO Sabrina Salerno – FONDAZIONE CA’ GRANDA Marco Vicenzi- OSPEDALE SAN RAFFAELE Giovanni Landoni – MARIO NEGRI Roberto Latini – OSPEDALE PEDIATRICO BAMBINO GESU’ Marcello Chinali – POLICLINICO SAN MATTEO Alessandra Greco – FONDAZIONE MAUGERI Oronzo Catalano – HUMANITAS Cristina Panico – ISMETT IRCCS  Cristina Panico – ISTITUTO GIANNINA GASLINI Maria Derchi – IRCCS POLICLINICO UNIVERSITARIO AGOSTINO GEMELLI IRCCS Antonella Lombardo