In 2021, during the Agorà Congress, Agorà decided, together with some partners, to support the Umberto Veronesi Foundation by funding a scholarship for a young breast cancer researcher to provide concrete support for research and all the women who are facing and fighting this disease on a daily basis.

Breast cancer is the most common malignant neoplasm among women and, from a molecular point of view, one of the most heterogeneous. Biomarkers – that is, biological molecules that

They function as "indicators"—they have proven highly useful for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Their analysis, however, is usually performed on patient tissue biopsies, an invasive and difficult-to-repeat procedure. Liquid biopsy, the analysis of tumor DNA present in patients' bodily fluids (such as blood or urine), is proving to be a promising new approach for obtaining information on tumor characteristics noninvasively.

Today, however, DNA sequencing (i.e., "reading" tumor DNA) can be very expensive and not always accessible to everyone. Nanopore sequencing technology has developed an accessible and versatile protocol for analyzing tumor DNA circulating in the blood: this technique could prove useful for research and clinical practice.

The project's goal is to improve the "characterization" (i.e., study and analysis) of tumors by analyzing the genetic characteristics of each patient's tumor and identifying the presence of specific mutations. This will allow for monitoring the tumor's progression over time, providing increasingly personalized therapy.