Who was Oscar Peano and why his story inspired the first scholarship against Mesothelioma

He had been the manager of public parks in the city of Turin. «His passion was trees, plants, flowers. Until the last day when the forces supported him, he did not stop pruning his roses. Behold, he was such a man: tenacious and passionate. A very concrete dreamer. He had an incurable pain behind him, the disappearance of his wife: you could see it in his eyes. Oscar was my father-in-law, Marco’s father. A person I have known too little. Someone who welcomed me into his family with a gesture so natural that it moves me just thinking about it. I really miss”. To speak is Francesca Marson, companion of Marco, son of Oscar Peano – who passed away a year ago from pleural mesothelioma – and author of the blog Ink Clouds (on IG @nuvoledinerello) from which the fundraising started with the aim of financing a specific research project active in the Alessandria and Casalese territory and which was then transformed into a real scholarship, thanks to the decision of the Buzzi Unicem Foundation to double the amount raised, to give further dignity and support to the project.

The scholarship, worth about 25 thousand euros, was activated by theAlessandria Hospital and is intended for a datamanager who will deal with the management of clinical trials concerning pleural mesothelioma.

In particular, the fellow will coordinate the clinical care pathways of patients affected by this pathology and will support specialists in the management of clinical and preclinical studies on mesothelioma, collaborating with the Research, Training, Innovation Infrastructure.

“This figure is central to us for an efficient management of the patient path and clinical trials in progress, being a point of reference for all specialists involved in the treatment of the disease (pulmonologists, radiologists, oncologists, thoracic surgeons, pathologists, psychologists and palliativists), but also to maintain relations with the researchers of the mesothelioma biobank and with other centers involved in both clinical and preclinical trials “, explained Federica Grosso, in charge of the Mesothelioma Facility.

Investing in research means investing in the future and contributing to the hope of an improvement in the quality of life and care of patients suffering from this pathology, which represents a drama that has not yet been defeated. The case of Oscar Peano becomes emblematic in this sense, as Francesca Marson herself explains.

How did Oscar Peano discover the tumor?
«It was the Christmas holidays of 2019. Oscar and Marco were in my seaside town, in Genoa: we had decided to spend the holidays with my parents, all together. But the ups and downs of the Genoese streets cost him a lot of effort, he always seemed in debt for oxygen. Until one evening, while he was sitting on the sofa at home, his heavy breathing occupied the whole living room. We naively thought it was a respiratory dysfunction problem. Not a pleural mesothelioma, the neoplasm that affects the film that lines the lungs and the inner surface of the chest. The pathology linked to exposure to asbestos, to which Oscar was reluctantly a victim due to environmental, family and, to a lesser extent, work factors ».

What are the possible causes and difficulties of treating this type of tumor?
“The causes are attributable to only one, unfortunately: contact with asbestos dust. The difficulties concern the rare incidence of this type of tumor, of which there is currently a very small scientific literature. The treatments are mostly experimental, and the fact that Oscar attempted the most advanced in the world – the Alexandria hospital followed the protocol coordinated with that of Kingston, Canada – will never give it back to us, but it is one of the ways in which Marco and I repeat every day that we have done everything possible ».

How did the idea of ​​creating a scholarship in his name come about?
«We had followed with interest other campaigns successfully launched on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, and we tried. We have managed, also due to our professional experiences (we both work, Marco and I, in publishing) and above all to the community that has been created over the years around my blog and Instagram profile @nuvoledinerello, to collect a considerable amount from different subjects public and private. The experience was shared and supported, going beyond our expectations; the fact that the Buzzi Unicem Foundation – to whom we had already decided to donate the amount – wanted to double the sum, allowed us to achieve this important goal.

With what hope?
“We would like no one in the world to ever hear the phrase” pleural mesothelioma cannot be cured “”.