Emanuela Palmerini Joins Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center Sarcoma Team

Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Dr. Palmerini specializes in Ewing sarcoma and osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer that originates in the bone and connective tissues.

By Alan Gomez;

Over the past 20 years, Emanuela Palmerini has worked in Bologna, Italy, establishing herself as one of the world’s premier researchers of bone and soft tissue sarcomas.

During that time, she coordinated dozens of clinical trials at the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute, taught at her alma mater, the University of Bologna, and helped lead several research networks targeting the ultra-rare cancers that don’t get the same attention – or research funding – as other cancers.

Now, Dr. Palmerini is hoping to continue those efforts as a member of the medical oncology team at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She was hired in March as a full professor of sarcoma research and wants to start a large-scale, pre-clinical study and use experimental medications for those rare conditions, particularly within phase 1 and adolescent and young adult (AYA) programs.

Ultimately, she hopes she can use her new position at Sylvester to serve as a sarcoma ambassador, recruiting experts from around the globe to tackle those rare diseases.

“I needed at this point in my career to find a quicker path to solutions for these diseases,” she said. “If you stay somewhere for 20 years, you can build something very meaningful. But if you want to shorten that timeline, you have to think about other ways of achieve that success.”

Background and Family History

Dr. Palmerini’s road to becoming a doctor was almost preordained. Her father is a gastroenterologist (still practicing at 82 years old) and her brother is a neurologist. One day, her father left a medical journal out that discussed the use of antisense nucleotides to block the development of cancer, and she was hooked. Dr. Palmerini studied at the University of Bologna and earned her medical degree in 2000.

Her decision to study sarcomas, however, happened by chance. After graduating, she was named a visiting research fellow at Rockefeller University in New York City, where she treated patients and studied colon cancer. There, she encountered a patient with a liposarcoma, a type of cancer that at that time she didn’t understand.

“It’s very scary for a doctor not knowing what to do,” she said.

That led her to a lecture by Dr. Bob Maki, a sarcoma expert. Dr. Palmerini became fascinated by those hard-to-understand cancers. In 2005, the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute in Bologna offered her a position to study sarcomas, and she never looked back.

Dr. Palmerini specializes in osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer that originates in the bone and connective tissues around them, and Ewing sarcoma, a bone cancer that primarily affects children. In her position at the Rizzoli Institute, she led more than 30 clinical trials studying those diseases. As her expertise grew, so did her profile.

Accolades in her Field

In 2021, Dr. Palmerini was selected as the co-chair of the Fight OsteoSarcoma Through European Research (FOSTER) consortium, a group of more than 350 members from 19 countries. She was also named to the steering committee of two groups within the Euro Ewing Consortium, a network of more than 200 members from 30 countries.

For her groundbreaking work, Palmerini received the 2017 Turrita d’Argento(the “Silver Tower”), awarded by the city of Bologna to its most accomplished musicians, entrepreneurs and scientists. In 2019, she received the Laura Bassi Medal, named after the first woman to earn a doctorate in science and the first salaried, female teacher in a European university. And she’s won the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Foundation’s Abstract Merit Award six times.

The ‘Messi’ of Bone Tumor Research

But much work remains. Dr. Palmerini has already been brainstorming with experts across UM to plan her collaborations and translational research. She’ll be working with the teams of Jonathan Trent the director of the Bone and Soft Tissue Sarcoma Group at Sylvester, and Francis Hornicek, Sylvester chair and chief of service for orthopaedics.

She’s also been preparing for the classroom as a teacher and mentor. The process of drug discovery can take more than a decade, so Dr. Palmerini feels it’s important to spend that time training aspiring researchers.

Dr. Palmerini said her time on campus has already exceeded expectations, and the feeling is mutual. When asked what Dr. Palmerini will bring to Sylvester, Dr. Trent quoted another researcher who called her “the Lionel Messi of bone tumor research and patient care.”

“Dr. Palmerini brings an extraordinary depth and breadth of experience in diagnosing, treating, and researching bone tumors, particularly in patients who are AYA and affected by sarcoma,” Dr. Trent said. “Her dedication to improving outcomes for these patients has earned her a reputation as a top specialist in the field, both in Europe and globally.”