Learning Planet Alliance – Impact Innovators Forum – Vittoria Pinci

Hi everyone and welcome to my presentation for Learning Planet Festival with Learning Planet Alliance. I’m Vittoria Benchy and I’m going to be talking about my organization, PARCC, Pancreatic Awareness and Research Coalition. So a little bit about me, again, I’m Vittoria.

My favorite hobbies are photography and biology. I don’t really know if biology can be exactly described as a hobby, but we can just leave it as that. I’ve been a photographer for almost two years at my school newspaper.
I’ve taken many photography classes including digital and darkroom which are my personal two favorites. I’m a member of the Innovative Pitching Club and a co-leader of the Biotechnology Club. Both of these clubs are leaning towards the discussion of what we can do to advance our knowledge on biotechnology and the biology in general field.

So a question you might be asking yourself is why am I so passionate about this topic? Why am I so passionate about medical research or pancreatic cancer research? So I’ve had a real life experience with this issue.
My maternal grandma has died from pancreatic cancer a little bit over two years ago. I believe that since the issue has impacted me personally, it has drawn some sort of inspiration to help others and raise awareness on this specific topic. I’ve also participated in internships in the medical field and I’m also part of cancer patient care groups.

So are you at risk of pancreatic cancer or how can you tell? What are the causes? What are the symptoms?
So pancreatic cancer is a worldwide problem that affects mostly the elderly. Most people who suffer from this disease aren’t able to access a cure mostly because of insufficient money. We don’t really have enough tech advancements to confront this issue.

Most of the people who are diagnosed usually find out about this disease at a really advanced stage. So our resources aren’t advanced enough to confront this disease at its most advanced stages, which is one of the major causes of the high death rates. So the causes basically start mostly in teenage lives with alcohol abuse, smoking abuse, unhealthy diets, etc.

It can also be transferred down to your family. So if your grandfather, if your grandparents, your parents have had pancreatic cancer, it might still be in the gene and you can still be diagnosed with such disease. And 39.6% of U.S. adults are obese and this percentage is still going up nowadays, which equals to high risk of pancreatic cancer. So why is this issue so important? So talking about a worldwide scale, this is the 12th most common and deadliest cancer worldwide. We have 495,000 new cases only in 2020.

The risk of being diagnosed is 1 to 58 in men and 1 to 60 in women and only 50% of people are diagnosed as in early stage because of as I said before, it’s a very quiet disease. It doesn’t really show until its advanced stages. Talking more about a U.S. scale, consulting this statistics, we can see that in the past 20 years, the estimated new cases and the estimated deaths for both male and females, the rates have been going up dramatically. So there’s like a really powerful need for us to make an impact and make decisions for us to lead to a better future. So for me, the solution would be to again, create an organization, and I did, PARCC. Again, it’s for Pancreatic Organism Research Coalition.

So we are leaning towards research advocacy for increased funding and support, promotion of accessibility in clinical trials, public awareness campaigns, education initiatives for future medical professionals, collaboration with multidisciplinary teams, etc. These are all like our goals for my organization. So a little bit about our framework.

It’s the main word would be donare. It is an Italian word, which literally means to donate. The framework would be D, donare, donate, support the cause. Every donation brings us closer to the cure. O for optimize, enhance trial access and maximize research impact. And for navigate, guide patients as they navigate throughout treatment options.

A, advance medical knowledge through dedicated research advocacy. R for rally, rally communities to raise awareness and support for pancreatic cancer. Educate and empower communities by educating them on prevention strategies.
So this is my team. Those are the most influential people on my organization. There’s Billy, blog manager, Amelia, research manager, paid or patient care, and then there’s me, founder and CEO of the company.

So for the roadmap, we have three different phases, which we can hopefully reach all the way to phase three. Phase one would be the present 2024. We are creating blogs and platforms, create organizations and conferences to make ourselves known, and most importantly, fundraising.

In two or three years, we will pass on to step two, phase two, which is raise awareness throughout my now work, my past work. Advance knowledge, my own and of others for me to pass on to others. Empower with possibilities of tackling this certain issue.

In phase three, which would be in another five to seven years, I will become a cancer researcher. I will have hands-on cancer research. I will hopefully work in lab to contribute advancements for this cure, to create more cures and to help others and connect with experts.

So what is our main goal? Our main goal would be to extend lifespan throughout early detection. So for even though the percentage is really, really low, for those patients who do get diagnosed with this disease at early stages, we want to extend their lifespan and make their lives better.

Improve quality of life, as I just said, improve quality of life for patients mentally and physically. As we know, this very deadly disease can affect patients both mentally and physically. Reduction in pancreatic cancer morality rates.

This is pretty obvious. We want to get the morality rates more down. Empower communities throughout awareness.
We can share our knowledge to patients and to other people and whoever is interested in this topic and elevate understanding collaboration in medicine. Thank you so much for listening for us, for my organization. The most important thing is awareness that needs to be spread more and more every day to help more patients consult an expert checkup on their physical health.

We need more people to go and get more checkups on their medical advisor or their family care to get take care of your health physically, mentally. If you’re interested in joining us, I put below my contact info. The more we are, the merrier.
Of course, I want to share my knowledge with other people. Thank you so much.

Parc Association

Cancer research is not only about discovering new therapies but also about prevention, early diagnosis, and improving the quality of life for those living with this disease.