China News Service | Zhejiang and Italy jointly establish a laboratory to overcome technical challenges such as early cancer screening
China News Service, Shaoxing, June 19 (Xiang Jing) — On the 18th, the “Yilian Shaoxing · Creating a Win Future”—Biomedical Frontier Science Salon and International Joint Laboratory Construction Promotion Conference held in Keqiao, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, announced that the “Zhejiang-Italy Joint Laboratory for Clinical Medical Application and R&D of Artificial Intelligence and New Materials” (hereinafter referred to as the “Joint Laboratory”) will focus on technological breakthroughs and translational applications in fields such as early cancer screening, covering pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer, and more.
It is reported that the joint laboratory has been included in the 2025 Zhejiang Province International Science and Technology Cooperation Carrier Recognition List. It was jointly built by Shaoxing People’s Hospital and the Italian Institute of Technology, implementing a mechanism of “patient question creation, government assistance, platform answering, clinical testing, and market evaluation,” aiming to build an open and shared international collaborative innovation platform.
On June 18, the “Yilian Shaoxing · Creating a Win Future” — Biomedical Frontier Science Salon and International Joint Laboratory Construction Promotion Conference was held onsite. Photo by Yu Minzhi
“Italy has mature technology in high-end medical materials and instrument design, while China, especially Zhejiang’s medical industry, is thriving. The prospects for cooperation between the two are broad.” Giancarlo Ruocco, Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Director of the Center for Life Nanoscience and Neuroscience at the Italian Institute of Technology, said in an interview that this collaboration can achieve complementary advantages and accelerate the transformation and clinical application of cutting-edge scientific achievements.
Early cancer screening is one of the key areas for the joint laboratory. Giancarlo Rocco explained that cancer restricts human health, and early screening and treatment are the best ways to improve treatment outcomes. Focusing on the cancer early screening project, both parties will jointly build a high-throughput integrated early cancer screening system. In the future, patients will only need to undergo non-invasive urine screening to complete early cancer screening, significantly reducing initial screening costs and disease risks.
“In Italy, the current system has already been validated for breast and prostate cancer. Based on the characteristics of patients in Shaoxing, we plan to expand the system’s diagnostic scope and add early screening for other tumor types such as pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer. ” said Giancarlo Rocco.
According to the plan, the cancer early screening program will be carried out in three phases. Starting this year, Shaoxing People’s Hospital will establish a testing laboratory to conduct large-scale clinical sample (urine) validation and accumulate data from Asian populations. Subsequently, the two parties will jointly develop fully automated, multi-sample prototypes and iterate AI diagnostic software based on clinical data. They aim to promote the clinical implementation of the entire set of technologies within three years.
In addition, China and Italy will jointly build a non-invasive early diagnosis platform for retina to jointly tackle the clinical diagnostic challenges of Alzheimer’s disease.
