Publications by authors named "Donatella Cimini"

Many studies have highlighted the role of probiotics in re-establishing the gut microbiota balance and preventing intestinal barrier dysfunction. In fact, they can also contribute to the upregulation of anti-inflammatory genes and the downregulation of pro-inflammatory genes, which are known to contribute to the development of the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) syndrome. The present study aims to investigate the effect of the compatible solute hydroxyectoine (HOE), to be used as a cryopreservant but also for its intrinsic biological properties, to obtain a new formula containing three probiotic strains ( (), SP-48 (), and HN019 ()), and evaluate the latter for its ability to prevent lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation in an bi-dimensional model of the intestinal barrier using a Caco-2 cell monolayer.

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subsp. HN019 is a commercially available well-characterized probiotic with documented effects on human health, such as the ability to enhance the immune function and to balance the intestinal microbiome. Therefore, optimizing the manufacturing process to improve sustainability, increasing biomass yields and viability, and avoiding animal -derived nutrients in the medium to meet vegan consumer's needs, is currently of interest.

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Lactobacillus paracasei IMC502® is a commercially successful probiotic strain. However, there are no reports that investigate growth medium composition in relation to improved biomass production for this strain. The major outcome of the present study is the design and optimization of a growth medium based on vegan components to be used in the cultivation of Lactobacillus paracasei IMC502®, by using Design of Experiments.

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Agri-food residues offer significant potential as a raw material for the production of L-lactic acid through microbial fermentation. Weizmannia coagulans, previously known as Bacillus coagulans, is a spore-forming, lactic acid-producing, gram-positive, with known probiotic and prebiotic properties. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing untreated citrus waste as a sustainable feedstock for the production of L-lactic acid in a one-step process, by using the strain W.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Obesity leads to systemic oxidative stress and inflammation, which can negatively affect male fertility by altering sperm quality and function through circRNA regulation.
  • - A study involving high-fat diet male mice treated with a combination of vitamins and antioxidants showed a reversal of obesity-related sperm defects, suggesting the effectiveness of these bioactive molecules.
  • - The research focused on how the treatment improved sperm circRNA profiles, indicating that these changes may enhance sperm motility and viability by addressing oxidative stress issues.
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Urinary tract infections (UTIs) and catheter-associated UTIs (CAUTIs) are the principal hospital-acquired infections. Between these, bacterial prostatitis is believed to be the leading cause of recurrent UTIs in men under 50 years of age and is often unresponsive to antibiotic treatment. is more commonly associated with UTIs in these abnormalities, especially in patients undergoing catheterization.

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Chondroitin sulfate (CS) is a well-known glycosaminoglycan present in a large variety of animal tissues, with an outstanding structural heterogeneity mainly related to molecular weight and sulfation pattern. Recently, few microorganisms, eventually engineered, proved able to synthesize the CS biopolymer backbone, composed of d-glucuronic acid and N-acetyl-d-galactosamine linked through alternating β-(1-3)- and β-(1-4)-glycosidic bonds, and secrete the biopolymers generally unsulfated and possibly decorated with other carbohydrates/molecules. Enzyme catalyzed/assisted methods and chemical tailored protocols allowed to obtain a variety of macromolecules not only resembling the natural extractive ones, but even enlarging the access to unnatural structural features.

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Article Synopsis
  • Obesity can lead to excess fat accumulation, oxidative stress, and chronic inflammation, which negatively impacts male reproductive health, especially in younger populations.
  • This study investigates how a high-fat diet (HFD) affects sperm quality and the levels of circular RNAs (circRNAs), crucial for sperm development, in male mice.
  • Findings show that although sperm from HFD mice have enhanced backsplicing abilities, they also exhibit inefficient circRNA production, potentially linked to proteins FUS and QKI, which may play a role in regulating these processes.
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: The integrity of the intestinal barrier is fundamental to gut health and homeostasis; its damage can increase intestinal permeability, with translocation of bacteria and/or endotoxins from gut, and the onset of various intestinal diseases. spp. is one of the most common probiotics normally found in fermented foods and dairy products and is known for its anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties and for its ability to protect and enhance the intestinal barrier functions.

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Pharma-grade extractive chondroitin sulfate (CS) is widely used for osteoarthritis (OA) treatment. Recently, unsulfated biofermentative chondroitin (BC) proved positive effects in OA in vitro model. This study, based on primary pathological human synoviocytes, aimed to analyze, by a multiplex assay, a panel of OA-related biomarkers in response to short-term treatments with bovine (CS), pig (CS) and fish (CS) chondroitins, in comparison to BC.

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Article Synopsis
  • * There is growing concern over using animal-derived products, leading to research on alternative, animal-free ways to produce chondroitin, including a promising unsulfated form derived biotechnologically.
  • * In studies on mice with knee osteoarthritis, biotechnological chondroitin (BC) demonstrated significant improvements, similar to CS, by reducing pain, inflammation, and cartilage damage, highlighting its potential as a preferable treatment option.
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Several strains have the potential to be used as probiotics since they provide health benefits due to the interaction of live cells, and of their secreted products, with the host (tissues). Therefore, the development of simple fermentation processes that improve cell viability to reduce industrial production costs, and at the same time the characterization and biological evaluation of cell-free postbiotics that can further promote application, are of great interest. In the present study, small scale batch fermentations on semi defined media, deprived of animal derived raw materials, were used to optimize growth of SP48, reaching 1.

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Probiotics are living microorganisms that give beneficial health effects while consumed, and each strain possesses diverse and unique properties and also different technological characteristics that affect its ability to be produced at large scale. is a widely studied member of probiotics, however, few data are available on the development of fermentation and downstream processes for the production of viable biomasses for potential industrial applications. In the present study a novel strain was isolated from buffalo milk and used as test example for biotechnological process development.

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Chondroitin obtained through biotechnological processes (BC) shares similarities with both chondroitin sulfate (CS), due to the dimeric repetitive unit, and hyaluronic acid (HA), as it is unsulfated. In the framework of this experimental research, formulations containing BC with an average molecular size of about 35 KDa and high molecular weight HA (HHA) were characterized with respect to their rheological behavior, stability to enzymatic hydrolysis and they were evaluated in different skin damage models. The rheological characterization of the HHA/BC formulation revealed a G' of 92 ± 3 Pa and a G″ of 116 ± 5 Pa and supported an easy injectability even at a concentration of 40 mg/mL.

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Microscale fermentation systems are important high throughput tools in clone selection, and bioprocess set up and optimization, since they provide several parallel experiments in controlled conditions of pH, temperature, agitation, and gas flow rate. In this work we evaluated the performance of biotechnologically relevant strains with different respiratory requirements in the micro-Matrix microbioreactor. In particular Escherichia coli K4 requires well aerated fermentation conditions to improve its native production of chondroitin-like capsular polysaccharide, a biomedically attractive polymer.

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Several studies suggest that inflammation has a pivotal role during the progression of osteoarthritis (OA) and cytokines have been identified as the main process mediators. This study aimed to explore the ability to modulate the main OA pro-inflammatory biomarkers of novel gels (H-HA/BC) based on high molecular weight hyaluronan (H-HA) and unsulfated biotechnological chondroitin (BC). For the first time, BC was tested also in combination with H-HA on human primary cells isolated from pathological knee joints.

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Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are currently used for cartilage cell therapy because of their well proven capacity to differentiate in chondrocytes. The advantage of MSC-based therapy is the possibility of producing a high number of chondrocytes for implants. The transplant procedure, however, has some limitations, since MSCs may produce non-functional chondrocytes.

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Symptomatic slow-acting drugs (SYSADOA) are increasingly used as effective therapies for osteoarthritis, representing an attractive alternative to analgesics or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to relieve disease symptoms. Pharmaceutical preparations of chondroitin sulfate, derived from animal sources, alone or in combination with glucosamine sulfate, are widely recognized for their beneficial effect on osteoarthritis treatment. A growing interest has also been devoted to understanding the molecular mechanisms modulated by SYSADOA using -omic strategies, most of which rely on chondrocytes as a model system.

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Based on Plackett-Burman design, steepest ascent method, and Box-Behnken design, statistical optimization for B. subtilis AF17 for levan production was carried out. Sucrose, tryptone and initial pH were found to be the most significant parameter (P < 0.

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Functional foods and nutraceuticals frequently contain viable probiotic strains that, at certain titers, are considered to be responsible of beneficial effects on health. Recently, it was observed that secreted metabolites might play a key role in this respect, especially in immunomodulation. Exopolysaccharides produced by probiotics, for example, are used in the food, pharmaceutical, and biomedical fields, due to their unique properties.

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Chondroitin sulfate (CS) is a glycosaminoglycan playing several biological functions, which seem to be encoded through its sulfation pattern. This "sulfation code" is still to be deciphered. One of the barriers to this goal is the difficulty in achieving structurally well-defined CS polysaccharides since extraction from natural sources often leads to complex heterogeneous structures.

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Heparin and chondroitin sulfate are used as anti-thrombic and anti-osteoarthritis drugs, respectively, but their pharmacological actions depend on their structural characteristics such as their sulfation grade and their molecular weight. In the last years, new fermentation-based biotechnological approaches have tried to obtain heparin and chondroitin sulfate starting from the heparosan and chondroitin-like capsular polysaccharides produced by Escherichia coli K5 and K4. The study of the microbial capsular polysaccharide molecular weight is critical to obtain nature-like or structural tailor cut glycosaminoglycan homologues.

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Background: Due to its wide range of applications in the food, pharmaceutical and chemical fields, microbial synthesis of succinic acid is receiving growing attention, generating already relevant industrial results, as well as fueling constant research for improvements. In order to develop a sustainable process, a special focus is now set on the exploitation and conversion of lignocellulosic biomasses into platform chemicals.

Results: In the present work we used BPP7 in separated hydrolysis and fermentation experiments with as starting material.

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Several commercial uses and potential novel applications have recently been described for chondroitin sulfate (CS). However, the currently applied animal extractive procedure has a high environmental impact, which may become more profound especially in relation to the forecasted expansion of the CS market for applications as a food supplement, pharmaceutical ingredient, and biopolymer in materials for regenerative medicine. This issue, together with religious and consumer concerns, has prompted the good manufacturing practice (GMP) of chondroitin and CS.

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Glycosaminoglycans are extracellular matrix components related to several biological functions and diseases. Chondroitin sulfate is a sulphated glycosaminoglycan synthesized as part of proteoglycan molecules. They are frequently associated with amyloid deposits and possess an active role in amyloid fibril formation.

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