Affiliations

Ph.D., Clinical and Experimental Oncology and Hematology
Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, DiMI, University of Genova, IT
Assistant Medical Director, Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genova, IT
Member of the Board of Directors, Gruppo Oncologico Italiano di Ricerca Clinica (GOIRC) 

Biosketch

As a researcher, I believe my greatest achievement has been the successful study of a cohort of 413 clinically annotated invasive lobular breast cancers, which I carried out as a Research Fellow at Institut Jules Bordet, BE. In that effort, I performed most of the NGS and microarray data analyses, as well as a large part of the clinical statistics. Thanks to my contribution, our team was able to discover novel and clinically relevant properties of this type of breast cancer, which is characterized by an indolent behaviour, its resistance to chemotherapy, and a propensity to relapse late in its clinical course. We identified novel actionable targets, such as ERBB2 and ERBB3 mutations, the activation of the PI3K/mTOR pathway, and the amplification and overexpression of ESR1, the gene encoding for the estrogen receptor protein. Our findings were reported in a publication in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2016, of which I was co-first author (Desmedt C et al., J Clin Oncol 2016).
During my postgraduate education, I spent two years (2010-11) as Guest Researcher in the Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology, NIH (Bethesda, MD), mentored by Dr Y. Pommier. There, by applying transcriptomics analysis methods, I identified a previously uncharacterized protein, SLFN11 in correlation with activity of TOP1 and TOP2 inhibitors, and demonstrated its causal involvement in cancer sensitivity to DNA damaging agents (Zoppoli G et al., Proc Natl Acad U.S.A. 2012). That protein is now object of intense research by the scientific community, largely thanks to our publication.
Likewise, back at University of Genoa, by combining in silico analyses on the Cancer Genome Atlas pan-cancer data with in vitro experiments, I described the prognostic and potentially therapeutic relevance for breast cancer of SQLE, a rate-limiting cholesterol synthesis enzyme. I reported on its copy dosage/prognosis correlation and in vitro actionability in Brown DN et al., Sci Rep 2016 (as last author). SQLE is a novel and highly actionable target for cancer treatment, in that several selective inhibitors were developed against that protein in the ‘90s as cholesterol-lowering agents. Thanks to my report, interest in SQLE has resurfaced, and an entire class of orphan drugs may be soon put to use after being repurposed as anticancer agents.
Since I became Assistant Professor at University of Genoa, I took the scientific lead of the Translational Genomics Laboratory of my Department, where we are now conducting translational research with cutting-edge technologies. Currently, my researches are dedicated to: a) discovery of NGS-based non-invasive biomarkers of cancer relapse in early breast cancer (mainly through the detection of free circulating tumor DNA mutations, financed grant as Unit co-PI 5x1000 IRCCS); b) analysis of mechanisms of acquired resistance to endocrine treatment in breast cancer using NGS approaches (targeted gene screening and transcriptome sequencing, External Collaborator, IG AIRC grant to Giancarlo Pruneri); c) SLFN11 characterization in breast and ovarian cancer and its interconnections with the immune system (supported by a grant by University of Genoa).

Contacts

Email: gabriele.zoppoli@unige.it
Orcid: 0000-0002-1619-1708

Curriculum Vitae et Studiorum