Amadeo Parissenti

Dr. Parissenti’s research group and its collaborators seek to identify and validate effective approaches to monitor the effectiveness of cancer treatments in cancer patients. They recently discovered the ability of a variety of structurally distinct chemotherapy agents to induce the degradation of ribosomal RNA in tumour cells, a phenomenon we refer to as “RNA disruption”. Interestingly, they observed in a national clinical trial (MA.22) that high tumour RNA disruption during treatment is associated with pathologic complete response and improved disease-free survival after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced breast cancer.