Strategies to decrease inequalities in cancer therapeutics, care and prevention: Proceedings on a conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the European Academy of Cancer Sciences, Vatican City, February 23-24, 2023.

Analyses of inequalities related to prevention and cancer therapeutics/care show disparities between countries with different economic standing, and within countries with high Gross Domestic Product. The development of basic technological and biological research provides clinical and prevention opportunities that make their implementation into healthcare systems more complex, mainly due to the growth of Personalized/Precision Cancer Medicine (PCM). Initiatives like the USA-Cancer Moonshot and the EU-Mission on Cancer and Europe's Beating Cancer Plan are initiated to boost cancer prevention and therapeutics/care innovation and to mitigate present inequalities. The conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the European Academy of Cancer Sciences discussed the inequality problem, dependent on the economic status of a country, the increasing demands for infrastructure supportive of innovative research and its implementation in healthcare and prevention programs. Establishing translational research defined as a coherent cancer research continuum is still a challenge. Research has to cover the entire continuum from basic to outcomes research for clinical and prevention modalities. Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCCs) are of critical importance for integrating research innovations to preclinical and clinical research, as for ensuring state-of-the-art patient care within healthcare systems. International collaborative networks between CCCs are necessary to reach the critical mass of infrastructures and patients for PCM research, and for introducing prevention modalities and new treatments effectively. Outcomes and health economics research are required to assess the cost-effectiveness of new interventions, currently a missing element in the research portfolio. Data sharing and critical mass are essential for innovative research to develop PCM. Despite advances in cancer research, cancer incidence and prevalence is growing. Making cancer research infrastructures accessible for all patients, considering the increasing inequalities, requires science policy actions incentivizing research aimed at prevention and cancer therapeutics/care with an increased focus on patients' needs and cost-effective healthcare.

[Medical practice in Rome during the XVI century]. / La medicina a Roma nel secolo XVI. Malattie e medici di S. Filippo Neri.

S. Filippo Neri (1515-1595), founder of the Congregazione dell'Oratorio in Rome, was a longly debated clinic case for his various pathologies. Eminent scientists, like B. Eustachio and A. Cesalpino, treated him and drew up clinical reports, which were inserted in the Canonization Process and also published as scientific works, and which give useful informations about the history of medicine in the second half of the 16th century. Those reports relate, among others, about many diseases like frequent heart palpitation, shaking tremors heat flame and bronchitic fever episodes, that since hte age of thirty affected the saint. Autopsy revealed cardiac hypertrophia and pulmonary artery dilatation over twice the normal diameter. G. M. Lancisi was the first who formulated the hypothesis of an artery aneurysm, which, according to the present knowledge, can be produced by a post-stenotic dilatation of the pulmonary valve and/or pulmonary hypertension. Tremors and flames can be attributed to hyperthyroidism. Doctors who treated S. Filippo Neri and who shoved to be aware of his psychology, considered his pathology due to supernatural causes. Their conclusions can be understood basing on the medical way of thinking of that age, which was still linked to ancient medicine and limited by the biological and medical knowledge of the time.

The origin of the Corpus Hippocraticum from ancestors to Codices Antiqi: the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 276.

The Corpus Hippocraticum (C.H.) was originated by the collection of writings of late Greek medicine, mainly of Hippocratic school. The original works have been transmitted through rolls of papyrus or parchments as single treatise or small group of treatises until the IX-X century A.D., when in Byzantium were active scriptoria devoted to collect classical works of both religious and profane argument. Under the auspices of Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenete (tenth century), the tendency to encyclopedism of that period induces large collections of thematic works, i.e. about classical philosophy, astronomy, mathematics or medicine, as may be argued by the content of the Encyclopedia [2 Greek words] (X century). Vetusti codices, such as Vindobonensis med. IV, Parisinus 2253 (A), Laurentianus 74.7 (B), Marcianus Venentus gr. 269 (M) and Vaticanus gr. 276 (V) represent witnessing of the formation of the C.H.: codicological analysis suggests that these manuscripts have been handwritten in scriptoria of Byzantium's area, then carried in Western Europe. Since the first testimony of V is at the Royal Court in Palermo, the Norman Kings played a relevant role in tracing codices from Byzantium to Sicily, as well as Cardinal Bessarion to Rome and Venice.