In recent years, attention to social determinants of health has grown. Social determinants of health concern individual characteristics (income, employment, access to services) and contextual factors (for example, public policies) which have a surprisingly large influence on health and can reinforce or mitigate biological and genetic factors. The panel will present the results of recent research in this field, with a specific focus on the link between mental health, job quality, pension reforms, and social assistance. Lastly, we will discuss how research can guide future public policy to improve social well-being.

The effects of climate change on health consist in people’s reduced capacity to respond to environmental stimuli, reflected in deteriorations in physical and cognitive performance, leading to increased dangers to people’s health. For example, global warming represents a risk for heat-related illnesses. As a result, there is a clear need to develop and introduce suitable strategies to counter these threats, which represent a new challenge for future research. This event falls within the scope of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 13: Climate action.

As part of the “Crossborder platform for efficient management of biobanks (C3B)” project, coordinated by FIF and supported by the Interreg V-A Italy-Slovenia Cooperation Program and financed by the European Regional Development Fund, the conference aims to discuss about the importance of biobanks in the area of the programme (ITA-SLO). Biobanks can be consider one of the pillars sustaining biomedical research and promoting the transition thought the so called “personalized medicine”.

Since the discovery of radioactivity, the use of radiation for medical purposes has been a topic of great interest, leading to the birth of modern Nuclear Medicine and current Hadrontherapy techniques. The panel discussion will present current activities at the Laboratories and Sections of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) aimed at to the development of health technologies, from the treatment of tumors by proton and ion beams to the production of radiopharmaceuticals.

Two scientists with different backgrounds, who have always worked in the cancer research field, share their experience in what the lab life is, throughout the career of a researcher. How to conceive, plan and carry out projects with translational objectives, that can eventually impact on the clinical course of cancer patients, will be discussed. Two examples of research projects with these characteristics will be described.
One project, focused on breast cancer, investigates the molecular features that may distinguish breast cancer arising in young women from those in the non young counterpart, aiming at the identification of molecular fingerprints that could provide better and more tailored treatments for young breast cancer patients. The other project, focused on ovarian cancer, deals with the investigation of the molecular mechanisms underlying resistance to standard therapies and the ways to re-sensitize drug resistant tumors, using targeted agents that can eventually improve patient survival and quality of life.