Pilot 1.5

Pilot 1.5 affords the need of molecular indicators for a better clinical definition of human diseases such as thyroid lesions, through an innovative technology for local diagnostic.

Patients often undergo thyroid surgery even for indolent lesions only with a diagnostic and not really therapeutic aim. Hence, the identification of new biomarkers that could help in differentiating tumors that need a surgical invasive treatment from indolent ones is very important. 4-dimentionalSpatialOMIx mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) approach is able to generate molecular (proteins, peptides, lipids, glycans and small endo-exogenous compounds) images at single cell level.

This novel technology, able to investigate cytological and tissue specimens, might represent the new frontier of the precise diagnosis of several high-incidence diseases such as thyroid gland carcinoma. The hypothesis that this new diagnostic approach might eventually optimize the treatment of these diseases, e.g. preventing unnecessary surgery and long-term complications. To this purpose markers will be identified in cytological or bioptic tissue sections, depending on the specific disease with

Artificial Intelligence and advanced Machine Learning based computational methods that will be developed and fine-tuned through an interaction with Pilot 1.1. The combined application of these approaches will provide a means for the integration of omics data (to unravel the relationships between different biological functional levels) and for the development of data- and knowledge-driven decision support systems.