Chromatin modifiers are emerging as major determinants of many types of cancers, including Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphomas (ALCL), a family of highly heterogeneous T-cell lymphomas for which therapeutic options are still limited. HELLS is a multifunctional chromatin remodeling protein that affects genomic instability by participating in the DNA damage response. Although the transcriptional function of HELLS has been suggested, no clues on how HELLS controls transcription are currently available.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMatrix-based certified reference materials (CRMs) play a central role in the analysis of food contaminants for ensuring measurement accuracy and comparability, as they exhibit the same matrix effects during sample preparation and measurement as the food sample under investigation. However, the availability of such CRMs is still limited. This is also true for matrix CRMs containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), for which maximum levels in food are set in the EU by the Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/915 and in Switzerland by the regulation SR 817.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a severe form of muscular dystrophy caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. We characterized which isoforms of dystrophin were expressed by human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cardiac fibroblasts obtained from control and DMD patients. Distinct dystrophin isoforms were observed; however, highest molecular weight isoform was absent in DMD patients carrying exon deletions or mutations in the dystrophin gene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to mild to severe respiratory symptoms. Cardiovascular involvement is frequent and mainly manifests with myocarditis, arrhythmias, cardiac arrests, heart failure and coagulation abnormality. We generated human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from four COVID-19 patients, all characterized by increased levels of high-sensitivity Troponin I (hsTnI) during the infection acute phase, who developed (n = 2) or not (n = 2) severe myocarditis, as COVID-19 complication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is an X-linked syndrome that affects skeletal and cardiac muscle and is caused by mutation of the dystrophin gene. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) were generated from dermal fibroblasts by electroporation with episomal vectors containing the reprogramming factors (OCT4, SOX2, LIN28, KLF4, and l-MYC). The donor carried an out-of-frame deletion of exons 45-50 of the dystrophin gene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMyelofibrosis (MF) is the Philadelphia-negative myeloproliferative neoplasm characterized by the worst prognosis and no response to conventional therapy. Driver mutations in and impact on JAK-STAT pathway activation but also on the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS play a pivotal role in inflammation-induced oxidative damage to cellular components including DNA, therefore leading to greater genomic instability and promoting cell transformation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLong non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been recently described as key mediators in the development of hematological malignancies. In the last years, circulating lncRNAs have been proposed as a new class of non-invasive biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and prognosis and to predict treatment response. The present study is aimed to investigate the potential of circulating lncRNAs as non-invasive prognostic biomarkers in myelofibrosis (MF), the most severe among Philadelphia-negative myeloproliferative neoplasms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the past, cannabis was commonly associated with mysticism and illegality. Fortunately, in recent years perspectives and discourses have changed. More prominence has been given to the rigorous scientific effort that led to the discovery of cannabis' many physiological actions and endogenous signalling mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite major progress in treating skeletal muscle disease associated with dystrophinopathies, cardiomyopathy is emerging as a major cause of death in people carrying dystrophin gene mutations that remain without a targeted cure even with new treatment directions and advances in modelling abilities. The reasons for the stunted progress in ameliorating dystrophin-associated cardiomyopathy (DAC) can be explained by the difficulties in detecting pathophysiological mechanisms which can also be efficiently targeted within the heart in the widest patient population. New perspectives are clearly required to effectively address the unanswered questions concerning the identification of authentic and effectual readouts of DAC occurrence and severity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDisease progression of myeloproliferative neoplasms is the result of increased genomic complexity. Since the ability to predict disease evolution is crucial for clinical decisions, we studied single-cell genomics and transcriptomics of CD34-positive cells from a primary myelofibrosis (PMF) patient who progressed to acute myeloid leukemia (AML) while receiving Ruxolitinib. Single-cell genomics allowed the reconstruction of clonal hierarchy and demonstrated that TET2 was the first mutated gene while FLT3 was the last one.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNext-generation sequencing (NGS)-based cancer risk screening with multigene panels has become the most successful method for programming cancer prevention strategies. germ-line heterozygosity has been described to increase tumor susceptibility. In particular, families carrying heterozygous germ-line variants of gene have a 5- to 9-fold risk of developing breast cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMacrophages are mononuclear cells that become osteoclasts (OCs) in the presence of two cytokines, macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF), and receptor activator of NF-κB ligand (RANKL). RANKL binding to its specific receptor RANK leads to OCs differentiation mainly by nuclear factor of activated T-cells cytoplasmic 1 (NFATc1). In our previous study, the analysis of the protein network in NFATc1-knockdown cells, using the Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA), showed a link between NFATc1 and Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MEK)-extracellular receptor kinase (ERK) signaling pathway.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSingle-cell genomics has become the method of choice for the study of heterogeneous cell populations and represents an elective application in defining the architecture and clonal evolution in hematological neoplasms. Reconstructing the clonal evolution of a neoplastic population therefore represents the main way to understand more deeply the pathogenesis of the neoplasm, but it is also a potential tool to understand the evolution of the tumor population with respect to its response to therapy. Pre-analytical phase for single-cell genomics analysis is crucial to obtain a cell population suitable for single-cell sorting, and whole genome amplification is required to obtain the necessary amount of DNA from a single cell in order to proceed with sequencing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ultimate goal of precision disease modeling is to artificially recreate the disease of affected people in a highly controllable and adaptable external environment. This field has rapidly advanced which is evident from the application of patient-specific pluripotent stem-cell-derived precision therapies in numerous clinical trials aimed at a diverse set of diseases such as macular degeneration, heart disease, spinal cord injury, graft-versus-host disease, and muscular dystrophy. Despite the existence of semi-adequate treatments for tempering skeletal muscle degeneration in dystrophic patients, nonischemic cardiomyopathy remains one of the primary causes of death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNFATc1, which is ubiquitous in many cell types, is the master regulator of osteoclastogenesis. However, the molecular mechanisms by which NFATc1 drives its transcriptional program to produce osteoclasts from macrophages (M) remains poorly understood. We performed quantitative PCR (QPCR) arrays and bioinformatic analyses to discover new direct and indirect NFATc1 targets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRaw milk from 13 cows fed TMR supplemented with native pasture and from 13 cows fed only TMR on one farm was collected separately 4 times with an interval of 15 d between collections. Two blocks (14 kg each) of cheese were made from each milk. The objective was to determine the influence of consumption of native plants in Sicilian pastures on the aroma compounds present in Ragusano cheese.
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