September 2023 Project Activities
Dr Katarina Mirjačić Martinović attended the ESMO Preceptorship on Immuno-Oncology in Zurich organized by the European Society for Medical Oncology.
Title: Published preprint to celebrate the World Cancer Research Day
Dr Milena Cavic lecturer at the European Training Academy's Horizon Europe Twinning projects writing training
STEPUPIORS PI Dr Milena Cavic participated as a lecturer at a training for writing Horizon Europe Twinning projects for participants from 12 scientific institutions from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, organized by the European Training Academy in Belgrade, on September 04, 2023, in a hybrid mode. Participants received instructions from experienced trainers on how to write a project proposal and how to prepare a budget according to the new Lump Sum methodology. Finally, they had the opportunity to meet other funded Twinning project coordinators, representing GrInShield Twinning Project from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, TwiNSol – CECs from the Faculty of Technology Novi Sad, University of Novi Sad, BIOLAWEB from the Institute for Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy.
New Scientific Publication within WP2
The standard treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. To select patients who would benefit the most from this treatment, there is a need for predictive biomarkers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of clinical, pathological, radiological, inflammation-related genetic, and hematological parameters in the prediction of post-nCRT response. The obtained results showed that factors associated with favorable response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy were tumor morphology and hematological parameters which can be easily and routinely derived from initial laboratory results (NMR, eosinophil, basophil and monocyte counts) in a minimally invasive manner. Using various metrics, an aggregated score of the initial eosinophil, basophil, and monocyte counts demonstrated the best predictive performance.
Congratulations to the first author Mladen Marinkovic, MD, for a great achievement and a wonderful rest of his PhD journey ahead!
Dr Milena Cavic and Prof. Makis Zoidakis lecturers at 5ISSCBSD
STEPUPIORS Outreach events in kindergartens
Our first project year was filled with many important and inspiring events. Of particular importance was our work with young people and children on their education about healthy food and a healthy lifestyle. In addition to visiting elementary schools, we also visited children from two kindergartens in Belgrade, PU “Poletarac” from Palilula and PU “Lunja” from Vračar. Dr Ana Đurić, Dr Milena Cavic and Dr Marija Đorđić Crnogorac, in a good atmosphere through games and fun, encouraged children to think about healthy lifestyle habits that are extremely important for their future and proper psychophysical development. How the children accepted these topics and how willing they were to learn new knowledge is best described by their numerous drawings that we received as a gift.
Participation at EACR23 Congress, June 12-15, 2023, Torino, Italy
* P-0466 The Road from Human Sample Collections to the First Rectal Cancer Biobank at the Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia (Ana Đurić et al.)
* P-0083 Correlation between genetic and proteomic expression of predictive biomarkers of response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced rectal cancer identified by data independent acquisition mass spectrometry (Aleksandra Stanojević et al.)
