SCIENTIFIC REPORT ESF Exploratory Workshop on Molecular Signaling in Cardiovascular and Oncological Diseases: Similar and Shared Pathways

The Exploratory Workshop "Molecular signaling in cardiovascular and oncological diseases: similar and shared pathways" derived from the intention to put together researchers in cardiovascular diseases and oncology, molecular biology and information technology to evaluate similar and shared pathways and molecular signals during disease development. The definition of similarities and differences at the molecular level appears important for multiple reasons: 1) to investigate the multifactorial role in cell to cell communication, 2) to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms of diseases, 3) to prospect possible therapeutical interventions. This extensive collaboration strategy in multidisciplinary fields can offer a new background platform for the interdisciplinary research, by inducing also a constructive brainstorm among basic research investigators and clinicians and reducing the excessive fragmentation in medicine. The idea of the workshop originated in the environment of the Clinical Physiology Institute of the Italian Research Council (IFC-CNR), where the peculiarity of interdisciplinarity was mandatory from its foundation in 1968. At the beginning, the fields of activities have been mainly cardiopulmonary and metabolic diseases. The main features are: a multidisciplinary scientific/technological approach, based on the coexistence of medical, engineering, physics, informatics, mathematics, chemistry and biology research units; a comprehensive approach to clinical research, made possible by the presence, in the same environment, of hospital units, laboratories of animal research and epidemiological research groups. For these reasons IFC-CNR research has an integrated and multidisciplinary approach open to new fields of interaction. Three particular conditions solicited the idea to put together and explore cardiovascular and oncological research. The Positron Electron Tomography Laboratory started years ago studies in the field of cardiac microcirculation and ischemic myocardial metabolism and later on it became a powerful tool in oncological diagnostic procedures. Secondly, many patients who received chemotherapies developed heart failure symptoms and the IFC-CNR cardiologists had to afford the complexity of therapeutic decisions and to interact with the oncology specialists. Finally, in the biological laboratory the cellular and sub-cellular research favoured the study of shared phenomena and the analysis of similarities and differences in cellular signaling. In order to follow the purposes of the workshop the presentations were made without any specific sequences between cardiovascular and oncological fields, as well as with random commixture of basic and clinical research investigators. A large possibility of discussion was given to the participants after each presentation and at the end of the sessions. By overcoming the differences due to the specific branch of expertise, all the participants gave a fruitful contribute to the principal points of discussion by underlining potentialities, difficulties and weaknesses of a joint research for the future in a friendly and constructing way. Different substances have been analysed: endothelins and endothelin receptors, natriuretic peptides, HIF1?, VEGF, TNF-?, P and Eselectines, VCAM, ICAM, NFkB, HRG, PIGF, aquaporins, profiling 1, osteopontin, mitochondria ATPbinding cassette protein-1, hexokinases, protein disulfide isomerase A3, EMMPRIN. Vessel heterogeneity together with endothelial and smooth muscle cells heterogeneity and the role of micro environment on cell motility have been underlined. Important concepts and mechanisms, as intercellular interactions, matrix content and cellular activations, cellular proliferation, immune evasion, and targeting therapy have been descr