Research is emotion. Sometimes, it finds its surprising strength in the enthusiasm of the younger ones. And so the result of Emmanuel Pio Pastore, 22 years old, from Castrovillarese, is striking, who, on the threshold of his three-year degree in Biology at Unical, alone signed a study capable of offering a new key to understanding the risk of sepsis prediction. The work inevitably brought the student of the Calabrian university to unexpected popularity with the invitation to participate in the international conference “Bioimeic2025” on bioengineering, now in its third edition, and organized by the Université de Tlemcen, in Algeria. A review with over one hundred scientific contributions (selected by expert reviewers from several hundred proposals), presented by research groups from prestigious European, African and American universities. The symposium was also enriched by the presence of speakers renowned in the field of science, such as Habib Zaidi, from the University of Geneva (awarded “Kuwait Prize”) among the most important and cited medical physicists in the world, and other research experts in the field of artificial intelligence and bioengineering. Pastore summarized his work presented before the world meeting of scientists in this way: «The model I have developed represents, as far as reported so far in the literature, the new state of the art in predicting the risk of severe sepsis at 24 hours starting from transcriptomic data. In practice, a blood sample is sufficient upon the patient’s arrival in the emergency room, followed by the analysis of the transcripts: the model is able to estimate with good precision (over three cases out of four) the probability that the patient will evolve towards a severe form within 24 hours. However, it is worth underlining that the main step forward does not only lie in the improvement of the predictive metrics compared to previous models, but, above all, in the concrete possibility of applying this approach in clinical practice. Previous models in fact required very large expression panels, often based on tens or hundreds of genes, with RNA processing times (a type of biological molecule that indicates how active a gene is and influences the response to sepsis, ed.) that could take entire days, making it effectively impossible to exploit a prediction over a 24-hour horizon. In my study, however, the identification of a potential minimum panel of 6-7 genes allows transcriptomic analyzes that can be completed in a few hours, finally making a rapid and clinically useful prediction realistic. This scenario has a direct impact on patient management, because it allows us to promptly distinguish those who need immediate transfer to intensive care from those who can be monitored with a lower priority level. Now awaiting clinical validation, which is fundamental for future use, this is, in my opinion, a very important first step towards the most important objective: helping doctors save lives thanks to increasingly useful and immediate predictions at a clinical level.” Emmanuel Pio Pastore, already the author of several publications in high-end journals such as Springer Nature, Elsevier and Oxford University Press, thanked those who allowed him and are allowing him to realize his dreams: «First of all, the University of Tlmecen which gave me the opportunity to participate for free, alongside scientists with an international profile, recognizing my student status. And then, I am particularly grateful to professors Peppino Sapia and Francesco De Rango, of Unical, for the support they guarantee me in my studies. And, of course, I thank the rector of the University of Calabria and the head of my department, Dibest. With their help, I hope not to have to leave Calabria, as happened to many young people like me. Maybe being able to expand my research in a laboratory that Unical is still missing for bioengineering and bioinformatics studies.”
John
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