Target cancer. Publications, congresses, laboratory activities, and then patents and preclinical molecules; the 170 researchers and the other 350 employees of Nerviano Medical Sciences (Nms) work to ensure that tumors are increasingly curable. They've been doing it for 50 years. Half a century in which they wrote important pages in the history of scientific literature. One more reason to be indignant when the name of the Centre, a stone's throw from Milan, is compared only to inefficient management or waste (although there has been no lack).
It has happened often recently. Especially when, in December 2010, the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception (which in 2004 inherited it from the US giant Pfizer) gave the structure free of charge to the Lombardy Region which became the new reference shareholder. Taking on, however, also an important debt. Of those who cry scandal: we are talking about 180 million. Of these, in reality, 120 are only temporarily recorded among liabilities because they are self-liquidating credits, i.e. destined to be extinguished, while the remaining 60 million are actual debts. The Region, which has included Nms in the Lombard oncological network, has undertaken to allocate 5 million euros a year for the next three years.
But Nerviano is not just debts: it is also a huge real estate asset, which insists on 100 thousand square meters, its research - as many as 22 molecules in the preclinical phase - has a recognized value, and financing it means evaluating the repercussions, even of a social nature, which will derive from the relaunch of one of the flagships of Italian research. In this perspective, the decision of the Lombardy Region takes on another significance. The agreement with the maximum Lombard territorial body represents one of the three cornerstones of the relaunch phase of Nms, which took shape in 2009 with the new board led by Alberto Sciumè (president) and Luciano Baielli (managing director). The administrators baptize the new phase by obtaining a loan of 30 million disbursed by Unicredit.
The second pillar on which the future of Nerviano rests passes from the new organizational structure made up of independent joint-stock companies and a consortium - "Infra" - which manages common functions, from the reduction of general costs by 35% and from the recovery of "profitability" . The results are tangible: in 2009 Nms loses 70 million euros, two years later "only" 15 million, and a further reduction in the red is expected as of 31 December 2012. In the next three years, the directors want to go beyond a balanced budget bringing the Center back into profit.
The third pillar is given by the dissolution of the pre-emption bond that linked Pfizer to Nms. But here we need to take a step back: in 2004, in fact, the pharmaceutical company with stars and stripes, abandoning its commitment in Lombardy, offers a dowry of 200 million euros to the new owners (Children of the Immaculate Conception) and a guaranteed turnover another 50 million for the
