Abstract
Born in 1930 in Faenza, Italy, Silvestrini graduated with highest honors from the University of Milan in 1952 with a Master of Science degree in biology, and acquired a teaching position in Normal and Pathological Immunohistochemistry in 1964.
In the early days of her career, Rosella Silvestrini joined Farmitalia, the largest pharmaceutical company in Italy in the 1970s. Successively, from 1963, she spent much of her career at Milan's Istituto Nazionale Tumori (National Cancer Institute), initially as a researcher of the National Research Council and later as Director of one of the five Divisions of Experimental Oncology. In 1997 she joined the Istituto Oncologico Romagnolo (Romagna Oncologic Institute) as a scientific consultant coordinator of the research laboratories. During her professional activity, she acted as an advisor in various scientific institutions, and has held positions in the Italian Ministry of University and Research and in the Ministry of Health (in commissions for national research and for oncology plans), and in the National Research Council Committees in which she collaborated in planning the three subsequent special Italian projects focused on oncology.
Rosella Silvestrini started her distinguished career in the Farmitalia's team of Aurelio Di Marco, where she contributed to the discovery and characterization of daunomycin, an antibiotic active against leukemia from which adriamycin was subsequently derived. These studies were conducted in close collaboration with the team of clinicians at the Istituto Nazionale Tumori of Milan, with the close and fruitful collaboration that made possible the development of effective treatments that significantly changed the natural history of solid and systemic malignancies, since then recognized and codified by the international scientific community. The strong collaboration with clinicians that characterized the beginning of Sivestrini's activity primed and characterized the continuation of her career.
Silvestrini led several groundbreaking studies on the biologic factors underlying cancer development, invasiveness, and progression and on determinants of sensitivity/resistance to clinical treatments, to identify prognostic and predictive markers, and on the action mechanisms of chemical, physical and biological agents in experimental models to define optimal treatment schedules. She was one of the first investigators to report a link between tumor cell proliferation and breast cancer prognosis: in this context and with the support of various Italian cancer institutes, she contributed to the activation around 1990 prospective studies to evaluate the clinical utility of determining proliferation indices to identify patients with stage I tumors at high risk of disease recurrence who could benefit from adjuvant treatments. Furthermore, according to one key scientific question concerning the use of robust and reliable biomarkers in clinical trials, which should be measurable with little or no variability, she dedicated much effort to the planning and implementation of quality control programs for the quantification of tissue biomarkers, including the proliferation indices.
The strong collaboration with clinicians that characterized the beginning of Silvestrini's activities has primed and distinguished her continuation, often directly collaborating with Umberto Veronesi and Gianni Bonadonna.
Rosella Silvestrini authored or co-authored approximately 270 journal articles and more than 20 book chapters. She has been a member of the scientific committees of international societies: the Cell Kinetics Society, the European Study Group for Cell Proliferation, and the International Association for Breast Cancer Research. She was a founding member and President of the Italian Society of Basic and Applied Cell Kinetics.
Among many career honors, she was awarded the American–Italian Cancer Foundation Award for her dedication to biological research and outstanding commitment to defeat cancer; merit from the International Journal of Oncology, Oncology Reports, and International Journal of Molecular Medicine for her scientific activity; the Curie 200 Award from the Association of Entrepreneurs and Women Business Leaders; and the institutional award Milano Donna from the Mayor of Milan.