Publications by authors named "Michela Luciano"

Article Synopsis
  • Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a serious blood cancer that is hard to treat, and scientists are studying a part of the immune system called the NLRP3 inflammasome to understand its role in AML.
  • Researchers looked at gene expressions in AML patients and created special cells to study how NLRP3 affects AML cell survival.
  • They found that higher levels of NLRP3 are linked to worse outcomes for patients, and blocking NLRP3 helps make AML cells die, which could lead to new treatments for the disease.
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Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a hematopoietic malignancy characterized by altered myeloid progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation. As in many other cancers, epigenetic transcriptional repressors such as histone deacetylases (HDACs) are dysregulated in AML. Here, we investigated (1) HDAC gene expression in AML patients and in different AML cell lines and (2) the effect of treating AML cells with the specific class IIA HDAC inhibitor TMP269, by applying proteomic and comparative bioinformatic analyses.

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Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a highly heterogeneous malignancy of the blood and bone marrow, characterized by clonal expansion of myeloid stem and progenitor cells and rapid disease progression. Chemotherapy has been the first-line treatment for AML for more than 30 years. Application of recent high-throughput next-generation sequencing technologies has revealed significant molecular heterogeneity to AML, which in turn has motivated efforts to develop new, targeted therapies.

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Streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin B (SpeB) is a cysteine protease expressed during group A streptococcal infection that represents a major virulence factor. Although subject to several studies, its role during infection is still under debate, and its proteolytic properties remain insufficiently characterized. Here, we revisited this protease through a set of complementary approaches relying on state of-the-art HPLC-MS methods.

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Chronic inflammation contributes to the development and progression of various tumors. Especially where the inflammation is mediated by cells of the innate immune system, the NLRP3 inflammasome plays an important role, as it senses and responds to a variety of exogenous and endogenous pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). The NLRP3 inflammasome is responsible for the maturation and secretion of the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and IL-18 and for the induction of a type of inflammatory cell death known as pyroptosis.

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Cytokines exert profound effects on the progression of hematopoietic malignancies such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Critical roles of cytokines in the context of inflammation have gained special interest. While pro-inflammatory mediators such as IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6 tend to increase AML aggressiveness, anti-inflammatory mediators such as TGF-β and IL-10 appear to impede AML progression.

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