Publications by authors named "Francesca Maddalena"

Metabolic rewiring promotes cancer cell adaptation to a hostile microenvironment, representing a hallmark of cancer. This process involves mitochondrial function and is mechanistically linked to the balance between mitochondrial biogenesis (MB) and mitophagy. The molecular chaperone TRAP1 is overexpressed in 60-70% of human colorectal cancers (CRC) and its over-expression correlates with poor clinical outcome, being associated with many cancer cell functions (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The staple line gastric leak (GL) is estimated to be the most serious complication of the sleeve gastrectomy. The use of indocyanine green (ICG) has been introduced in minimally invasive surgery to show the vascularization of the stomach in real time and its application to the gastroesophageal junction (GE) during Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy (LSG) seems very promising.

Case Presentation: We present the case of a 40-year-old female underwent laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Metabolic rewiring fuels rapid cancer cell proliferation by promoting adjustments in energetic resources, and increasing glucose uptake and its conversion into lactate, even in the presence of oxygen. Furthermore, solid tumors often contain hypoxic areas and can rapidly adapt to low oxygen conditions by activating hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)‑1α and several downstream pathways, thus sustaining cell survival and metabolic reprogramming. Since TNF receptor‑associated protein 1 (TRAP1) is a HSP90 molecular chaperone upregulated in several human malignancies and is involved in cancer cell adaptation to unfavorable environments and metabolic reprogramming, in the present study, its role was investigated in the adaptive response to hypoxia in human colorectal cancer (CRC) cells and organoids.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The management of cholelithiasis and choledocholithiasis combined is controversial. The more frequent approach is a two-stage procedure, with endoscopic sphincterotomy and stone removal from the bile duct followed by laparoscopic cholecystectomy. This study aims to demonstrate how, on the basis of the personal experience, the Rendez-vous technique, that combines the two techniques in a single-stage operation is better than the sequential treatment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Epigenetics is involved in tumor progression and drug resistance in human colorectal carcinoma (CRC). This study addressed the hypothesis that the DNA methylation profiling may predict the clinical behavior of metastatic CRCs (mCRCs). The global methylation profile of two human mCRC subgroups with significantly different outcome was analyzed and compared with gene expression and methylation data from The Cancer Genome Atlas COlon ADenocarcinoma (TCGA COAD) and the NCBI GENE expression Omnibus repository (GEO) GSE48684 mCRCs datasets to identify a prognostic signature of functionally methylated genes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Wnt/β-Catenin signaling is involved in embryonic development, regeneration, and cellular differentiation and is responsible for cancer stemness maintenance. The HSP90 molecular chaperone TRAP1 is upregulated in 60-70% of human colorectal carcinomas (CRCs) and favors stem cells maintenance, modulating the Wnt/β-Catenin pathway and preventing β-Catenin phosphorylation/degradation. The role of TRAP1 in the regulation of Wnt/β-Catenin signaling was further investigated in human CRC cell lines, patient-derived spheroids, and CRC specimens.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Metabolic rewiring is a mechanism of adaptation to unfavorable environmental conditions and tumor progression. TRAP1 is an HSP90 molecular chaperone upregulated in human colorectal carcinomas (CRCs) and responsible for downregulation of oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and adaptation to metabolic stress. The mechanism by which TRAP1 regulates glycolytic metabolism and the relevance of this regulation in resistance to EGFR inhibitors were investigated in patient-derived CRC spheres, human CRC cells, samples, and patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cholangiocarcinoma is a primary malignancy of the biliary tract characterized by late and unspecific symptoms, unfavorable prognosis, and few treatment options. The advent of next-generation sequencing has revealed potential targetable or actionable molecular alterations in biliary tumors. Among several identified genetic alterations, the mutation is arousing interest due to its role in epigenetic and metabolic remodeling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Minimally invasive surgery for colorectal cancer has been demonstrated to have the same oncological results as open surgery, with better clinical outcomes. Robotic surgery is an evolution of minimally invasive technique. This study aims to evaluate surgical and oncological short-term outcomes of robotic right colon resection in comparison with the laparoscopic approach.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Despite initial chemotherapy response, ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecologic cancer, due to frequent relapse and onset of drug resistance. To date, there is no affordable diagnostic/prognostic biomarker for early detection of the disease. However, it has been recently shown that high grade serous ovarian cancers show peculiar oxidative metabolism, which is in turn responsible for inflammatory response and drug resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The treatment for sliding esophageal hernia with mild gastroesophageal reflux is usually conservative, but surgical treatment is recommended for refractory sliding esophageal hernia, paraesophageal hernia liable to prolapse, or paraesophageal hernia with ulceration and/or stenosis. Robotic surgery overcomes laparoscopic pitfalls by providing steady-state three-dimensional visualization, augmented dexterity with endo-wrist movements, and superior ergonomics for the surgeon.

Case Presentation: To investigate robotic paraesophageal hernia repair, a literature search was conducted using PubMed with the following key words: mini invasive surgery, robotic surgery, hiatal hernia, and Nissen fundoplication.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor-Associated Protein 1 (TRAP1) is a heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) molecular chaperone overexpressed in 60-70% human colorectal carcinomas (CRCs) and the co-upregulation of TRAP1 and associated 6-related proteins identifies metastatic CRCs with poor prognosis. Since the molecular mechanisms responsible for TRAP1 regulation are still unknown, the significance of gene copy number (CN) and the role of post-transductional protein modifications were addressed. gene aneuploidy accounted for 34.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy, with well-differentiated subtypes characterized by an excellent prognosis due to their optimal sensitivity to standard therapies whereas poorly differentiated and anaplastic tumours by chemo/radio-resistance and unfavourable outcome. Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs) are molecular chaperones overexpressed in thyroid malignancies and involved in crucial functions responsible for thyroid carcinogenesis, as protection from apoptosis, drug resistance and cell migration. Thus, HSPs inhibitors have been proposed as novel therapeutic agents in thyroid cancer to revert molecular mechanisms of tumour progression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog (RAS)/v-raf-1 murine leukemia viral oncogene homolog 1 (RAF)/mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 (MAPK) signaling cascade is the most important oncogenic pathway in human cancers. Tumors leading mutations in the gene encoding for v-raf murine sarcoma viral oncogene homolog B (BRAF) serine-threonine kinase are reliant on the MAPK signaling pathway for their growth and survival. Indeed, the constitutive activation of MAPK pathway results in continuous stimulation of cell proliferation, enhancement of the apoptotic threshold and induction of a migratory and metastatic phenotype.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cancer has been considered, for a long time, a genetic disease where mutations in keyregulatory genes drive tumor initiation, growth, metastasis, and drug resistance. Instead, theadvent of high-throughput technologies has revolutionized cancer research, allowing to investigatemolecular alterations at multiple levels, including genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome,and metabolome and showing the multifaceted aspects of this disease. The multi-omics approachesrevealed an intricate molecular landscape where different cellular functions are interconnected andcooperatively contribute to shaping the malignant phenotype.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) molecular chaperones are a family of ubiquitous proteins participating in several cellular functions through the regulation of folding and/or assembly of large multiprotein complexes and client proteins. Thus, HSP90s chaperones are, directly or indirectly, master regulators of a variety of cellular processes, such as adaptation to stress, cell proliferation, motility, angiogenesis, and signal transduction. In recent years, it has been proposed that HSP90s play a crucial role in carcinogenesis as regulators of genotype-to-phenotype interplay.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The unfolded protein response (UPR) is a stress response activated by the accumulation of unfolded or misfolded proteins in the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and its uncontrolled activation is mechanistically responsible for several human pathologies, including metabolic, neurodegenerative, and inflammatory diseases, and cancer. Indeed, ER stress and the downstream UPR activation lead to changes in the levels and activities of key regulators of cell survival and autophagy and this is physiologically finalized to restore metabolic homeostasis with the integration of pro-death or/and pro-survival signals. By contrast, the chronic activation of UPR in cancer cells is widely considered a mechanism of tumor progression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Regulation of tumour cell proliferation by molecular chaperones is still a complex issue. Here, the role of the HSP90 molecular chaperone TRAP1 in cell cycle regulation was investigated in a wide range of human breast, colorectal, and lung carcinoma cell lines, and tumour specimens. TRAP1 modulates the expression and/or the ubiquitination of key cell cycle regulators through a dual mechanism: (i) transcriptional regulation of CDK1, CYCLIN B1, and MAD2, as suggested by gene expression profiling of TRAP1-silenced breast carcinoma cells; and (ii) post-transcriptional quality control of CDK1 and MAD2, being the ubiquitination of these two proteins enhanced upon TRAP1 down-regulation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

HSP90 molecular chaperones (i.e., HSP90α, HSP90β, GRP94 and TRAP1) are potential therapeutic targets to design novel anticancer agents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Metabolic reprogramming is one of the most frequent stress-adaptive response of cancer cells to survive environmental changes and meet increasing nutrient requirements during their growth. These modifications involve cellular bioenergetics and cross talk with surrounding microenvironment, in a dynamic network that connect different molecular processes, such as energy production, inflammatory response, and drug resistance. Even though the Warburg effect has long been considered the main metabolic feature of cancer cells, recent reports identify mitochondrial oxidative metabolism as a driving force for tumor growth in an increasing number of cellular contexts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

TRAP1 is a HSP90 molecular chaperone upregulated in colorectal carcinomas and involved in control of intracellular signaling, cell cycle, apoptosis and drug resistance, stemness and bioenergetics through co-traslational regulation of a network of client proteins. Thus, the clinical significance of TRAP1 protein network was analyzed in human colorectal cancers. TRAP1 and/or its client proteins were quantified, by immunoblot analysis, in 60 surgical specimens of colorectal carcinomas at different stages and, by immunohistochemistry, in 9 colorectal adenomatous polyps, 11 in situ carcinomas and 55 metastatic colorectal tumors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Colorectal carcinoma (CRC) is a common cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Indeed, treatment failures are triggered by cancer stem cells (CSCs) that give rise to tumor repopulation upon initial remission. Thus, the role of the heat shock protein TRAP1 in stemness was investigated in CRC cell lines and human specimens, based on its involvement in colorectal carcinogenesis, through regulation of apoptosis, protein homeostasis and bioenergetics.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: From 30 to 80% of hospitalized patients is inserted a peripheral venous catheter (PVC). The PVC may be associated to several infective and non infective complications.

Aims: To assess whether a long-length vs standard-length PCV reduces the incidence of CRCs; to assess the patients' preferences and costs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To date, there is no definitive demonstration of the utility of positron emission tomography (PET) in studying glucose metabolism in cultured cell lines. Thus, this study was designed to compare PET to more standardized methods for the quantitative assessment of glucose uptake in nontransformed and transformed living cells and to validate PET for metabolic studies in vitro. Human colon and breast carcinoma cell lines and mouse embryo fibroblasts were evaluated for [(18)F]fluorodeoxyglucose ([(18)F]FDG) uptake by PET and autoradiography and 2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) incorporation by colorimetric assay and analyzed for the radiotoxic effects of [(18)F]FDG and the expression levels of glucose transporters.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The HSP90 chaperone TRAP1 is translational regulator of BRAF synthesis/ubiquitination, since BRAF down-regulation, ERK signaling inhibition and delay of cell cycle progression occur upon TRAP1 silencing/inhibition. Since TRAP1 is upregulated in human colorectal carcinomas (CRCs) and involved in protection from apoptosis and as human BRAF-driven CRCs are poorly responsive to anticancer therapies, the relationship between TRAP1 regulation of mitochondrial apoptotic pathway and BRAF antiapoptotic signaling has been further evaluated. This study reports that BRAF cytoprotective signaling involves TRAP1-dependent inhibition of the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF