Publications by authors named "Federica Armanini"

is a significant public health concern due to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains. Cefiderocol (FDC), a novel siderophore cephalosporin, has shown promise as a last-line treatment for multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria. However, the emergence of -acquired FDC-resistant strains highlights the need for advanced tools to identify resistance-associated genomic mutations and address the challenges of FDC susceptibility testing.

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Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) improve outcomes in advanced melanoma, but many patients are refractory or experience relapse. The gut microbiota modulates antitumor responses. However, inconsistent baseline predictors point to heterogeneity in responses and inadequacy of cross-sectional data.

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Complex microbiomes are part of the food we eat and influence our own microbiome, but their diversity remains largely unexplored. Here, we generated the open access curatedFoodMetagenomicData (cFMD) resource by integrating 1,950 newly sequenced and 583 public food metagenomes. We produced 10,899 metagenome-assembled genomes spanning 1,036 prokaryotic and 108 eukaryotic species-level genome bins (SGBs), including 320 previously undescribed taxa.

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A study was conducted in fish processing facilities to investigate the microbial composition, microbial metabolic potential, and distribution of antibiotic resistance genes. Whole metagenomic sequencing was used to analyze microbial communities from different processing rooms, operators and fish products. Taxonomic analyses identified the genera and as the most prevalent bacteria.

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The composition and maturation of the early-life microbiota are modulated by a number of perinatal factors, whose interplay in relation to microbial vertical transmission remains inadequately elucidated. Using recent strain-tracking methodologies, we analyzed mother-to-infant microbiota transmission in two different birth environments: hospital-born (vaginal/cesarean) and home-born (vaginal) infants and their mothers. While delivery mode primarily explains initial compositional differences, place of birth impacts transmission timing-being early in homebirths and delayed in cesarean deliveries.

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Bacterial isolation is necessary for functional and mechanistic analyses, and the increased human microbiome diversity revealed by metagenomic sequencing is expanding the relevant cultivation targets. Here, we report 46 draft genome sequences of bacterial isolates obtained from fecal samples of healthy adults in Trento and Milan (Italy), including strains from seven taxonomically uncharacterized species.

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Malignant bile duct obstruction is typically treated by biliary stenting, which however increases the risk of bacterial infections. Here, we analyzed the microbial content of the biliary stents from 56 patients finding widespread microbial colonization. Seventeen of 36 prevalent stent species are common oral microbiome members, associate with disease conditions when present in the gut, and include dozens of biofilm- and antimicrobial resistance-related genes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Tumor immunotherapy, especially in melanoma, is influenced by gut microbiota, which can predict patient survival rates.
  • In the MIND-DC phase III trial, 148 melanoma patients were treated with dendritic cells or placebo, and their gut and serum samples were analyzed for microbial and metabolomic changes.
  • Results indicated that the presence of certain beneficial microbes like Faecalibacterium prausnitzii correlated with better prognosis, suggesting that host-microbe interactions could significantly impact melanoma outcomes.
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We performed a longitudinal shotgun metagenomic investigation of the plaque microbiome associated with peri-implant diseases in a cohort of 91 subjects with 320 quality-controlled metagenomes. Through recently improved taxonomic profiling methods, we identified the most discriminative species between healthy and diseased subjects at baseline, evaluated their change over time, and provided evidence that clinical treatment had a positive effect on plaque microbiome composition in patients affected by mucositis and peri-implantitis.

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  • Scientists are studying how the tiny living things in our gut (gut microbiome) can affect cancer treatment, specifically with a method called immune checkpoint blockade (ICB).
  • They looked at 175 patients with a type of skin cancer called melanoma to see how changes in the gut microbiome relate to how well the treatment works over time.
  • They found that certain types of gut bacteria can help predict if patients will do better or worse with the treatment, and understanding these changes can help doctors improve therapies in the future.
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Deep investigation of the microbiome of food-production and food-processing environments through whole-metagenome sequencing (WMS) can provide detailed information on the taxonomic composition and functional potential of the microbial communities that inhabit them, with huge potential benefits for environmental monitoring programs. However, certain technical challenges jeopardize the application of WMS technologies with this aim, with the most relevant one being the recovery of a sufficient amount of DNA from the frequently low-biomass samples collected from the equipment, tools and surfaces of food-processing plants. Here, we present the first complete workflow, with optimized DNA-purification methodology, to obtain high-quality WMS sequencing results from samples taken from food-production and food-processing environments and reconstruct metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs).

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Background: Neuroblastoma is the most frequent extracranial solid tumour in children, accounting for ∼15% of deaths due to cancer in childhood. The most common clinical presentation are abdominal tumours. An altered gut microbiome composition has been linked to multiple cancer types, and reported in murine models of neuroblastoma.

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Introduction: Psoriasis is a systemic immune-mediated disease primarily manifesting as skin redness and inflammation. Balneotherapy proved to be a successful non-pharmacological option to reduce the skin areas affected by the disease, but the specific mechanisms underlying this effect have not been elucidated yet. Here we test the hypothesis that the effect of thermal treatments on psoriatic lesions could be partially mediated by changes in the resident microbial population, i.

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A strain from a previously undescribed species belonging to the genus was isolated from the stool of a healthy volunteer. The strain is strictly anaerobic, and the genome encodes a CRISPR-Cas system and genes related to trimethylamine production.

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Article Synopsis
  • Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is being explored as a way to enhance the effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitors in treating advanced melanoma, but its use in initial treatments was previously untested.
  • A phase I trial involving 20 untreated melanoma patients showed that FMT combined with PD-1 inhibitors (nivolumab or pembrolizumab) was safe, with no severe adverse events from FMT alone, although some patients experienced immune-related side effects.
  • The trial found a 65% objective response rate, with changes in gut microbiome observed, indicating that successful treatments were linked to beneficial bacterial changes after FMT, suggesting that this approach should be studied further in conjunction with immune therapies.
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Mouse models are key tools for investigating host-microbiome interactions. However, shotgun metagenomics can only profile a limited fraction of the mouse gut microbiome. Here, we employ a metagenomic profiling method, MetaPhlAn 4, which exploits a large catalog of metagenome-assembled genomes (including 22,718 metagenome-assembled genomes from mice) to improve the profiling of the mouse gut microbiome.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how mother-to-infant microbiome transmission is affected by various factors, including delivery method and feeding practices, especially comparing Ethiopian mothers and infants to those from westernized populations.
  • - Findings show that while the microbiome of westernized and non-westernized newborns initially overlaps due to similar breastfeeding, Ethiopian infants have higher diversity and share fewer microbiome members with their mothers than their westernized counterparts.
  • - The research identifies unique uncharacterized bacteria in the Ethiopian cohort, suggesting that traditional foods like injera play a significant role in diversifying the gut microbiome, emphasizing the influence of lifestyle on these microbial patterns.
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The human microbiome is an integral component of the human body and a co-determinant of several health conditions. However, the extent to which interpersonal relations shape the individual genetic makeup of the microbiome and its transmission within and across populations remains largely unknown. Here, capitalizing on more than 9,700 human metagenomes and computational strain-level profiling, we detected extensive bacterial strain sharing across individuals (more than 10 million instances) with distinct mother-to-infant, intra-household and intra-population transmission patterns.

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Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is highly effective against recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection and is considered a promising treatment for other microbiome-related disorders, but a comprehensive understanding of microbial engraftment dynamics is lacking, which prevents informed applications of this therapeutic approach. Here, we performed an integrated shotgun metagenomic systematic meta-analysis of new and publicly available stool microbiomes collected from 226 triads of donors, pre-FMT recipients and post-FMT recipients across eight different disease types. By leveraging improved metagenomic strain-profiling to infer strain sharing, we found that recipients with higher donor strain engraftment were more likely to experience clinical success after FMT (P = 0.

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A growing body of evidence supports the notion that the gut microbiome plays an important role in cancer immunity. However, the underpinning mechanisms remain to be fully elucidated. One attractive hypothesis envisages that among the T cells elicited by the plethora of microbiome proteins a few exist that incidentally recognize neo-epitopes arising from cancer mutations ("molecular mimicry (MM)" hypothesis).

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Article Synopsis
  • Prostate cancer typically progresses from hormone-sensitive forms to castration-resistant forms despite androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), prompting research into the role of T lymphocytes and gut microbiota in treatment effectiveness.
  • In mouse models, ADT improved thymic function and was less effective in mice lacking T lymphocytes or with depleted gut microbiota, showing connections between immune response and therapy outcomes.
  • Analysis of prostate cancer patients indicated that long-term ADT increased immune cell output and altered gut microbiota, with the potential for fecal transplants from healthy donors to improve treatment response, highlighting the need for addressing intestinal health in therapy.
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  • Research shows that the gut microbiome may influence how patients with advanced melanoma respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), but there’s no clear agreement on which specific microbiome traits are beneficial.
  • A study that sequenced stool samples from 165 ICI-naive patients and combined these with 147 samples from earlier research found that microbiome characteristics linked to treatment response varied by patient group.
  • While some bacteria, like Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum and Akkermansia muciniphila, were associated with positive responses to ICIs, no single species reliably indicated treatment success, highlighting the complexity of this relationship and suggesting more research is needed.
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A large body of data both in animals and humans demonstrates that the gut microbiome plays a fundamental role in cancer immunity and in determining the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy. In this work, we have investigated whether and to what extent the gut microbiome can influence the antitumor activity of neo-epitope-based cancer vaccines in a BALB/c-CT26 cancer mouse model. Similarly to that observed in the C57BL/6-B16 model, administration per se has a beneficial effect on CT26 tumor inhibition.

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Cystic fibrosis (CF) disease leads to altered lung and gut microbiomes compared to healthy subjects. The magnitude of this dysbiosis is influenced by organ-specific microenvironmental conditions at different stages of the disease. However, how this gut-lung dysbiosis is influenced by chronic infection is unclear.

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