Publications by authors named "Rui Simoes"

Glioblastomas are aggressive brain tumors with dismal prognosis. One of the main bottlenecks for developing more effective therapies for glioblastoma stems from their histologic and molecular heterogeneity, leading to distinct tumor microenvironments and disease phenotypes. Effectively characterizing these features would improve the clinical management of glioblastoma.

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Objectives: Detecting premalignant lesions for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, mainly pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN), is critical for early diagnosis and for understanding PanIN biology. Based on PanIN's histology, we hypothesized that diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and T2* could detect PanIN.

Materials And Methods: DTI was explored for the detection and characterization of PanIN in genetically engineered mice (KC, KPC).

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Hypothalamic inflammation underlies diet-induced obesity and diabetes in rodent models. While diet normalization largely allows for recovery from metabolic impairment, it remains unknown whether long-term hypothalamic inflammation induced by obesogenic diets is a reversible process. In this study, we aimed at determining sex specificity of hypothalamic neuroinflammation and gliosis in mice fed a fat- and sugar-rich diet, and their reversibility upon diet normalization.

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Nitrocatechols are the standard pharmacophore to develop potent tight-binding inhibitors of catechol -methyltransferase (COMT), which can be used as coadjuvant drugs to manage Parkinson's disease. Tolcapone is the most potent drug of this class, but it has raised safety concerns due to its potential to induce liver damage. Tolcapone-induced hepatotoxicity has been attributed to the nitrocatechol moiety; however, other nitrocatechol-based COMT inhibitors, such as entacapone, are safe and do not damage the liver.

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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease characterized by the progressive loss of motor neurons, for which current treatment options are limited. Recent studies have shed light on the role of mitochondria in ALS pathogenesis, making them an attractive therapeutic intervention target. This review contains a very comprehensive critical description of the involvement of mitochondria and mitochondria-mediated mechanisms in ALS.

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Fetal growth restriction (FGR) affects 5-10% of pregnancies, is the largest contributor to fetal death, and can have long-term consequences for the child. Implementation of a standard clinical classification system is hampered by the multiphenotypic spectrum of small fetuses with substantial differences in perinatal risks. Machine learning and multiomics data can potentially revolutionize clinical decision-making in FGR by identifying new phenotypes.

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Brain damage associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) occurs even decades before the symptomatic onset, raising the need to investigate its progression from prodromal stages. In this context, animal models that progressively display AD pathological hallmarks (e.g.

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Background And Aims: Receptor-interacting protein kinase 3 (RIPK3) mediates NAFLD progression, but its metabolic function is unclear. Here, we aimed to investigate the role of RIPK3 in modulating mitochondria function, coupled with lipid droplet (LD) architecture in NAFLD.

Approach And Results: Functional studies evaluating mitochondria and LD biology were performed in wild-type (WT) and Ripk3-/- mice fed a choline-deficient, amino acid-defined (CDAA) diet for 32 and 66 weeks and in CRISPR-Cas9 Ripk3 -null fat-loaded immortalized hepatocytes.

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Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a health concern affecting 24% of the population worldwide. Although the pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying disease are not fully clarified, mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress are key players in disease progression. Consequently, efforts to develop more efficient pharmacologic strategies targeting mitochondria for NAFLD prevention/treatment are underway.

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Concrete-filled composite columns are widely used in the construction industry, exploiting the benefits of combining steel and concrete, providing, for instance, high load-bearing capacities and enhanced fire resistance. These solutions are extensively used in high-rise buildings and/or when high fire resistance performance requirements are imposed. In this exploratory research, a new type of concrete-filled composite column is investigated using fire resistance tests.

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With the increase in life expectancy and consequent aging of the world's population, the prevalence of many neurodegenerative diseases is increasing, without concomitant improvement in diagnostics and therapeutics. These diseases share neuropathological hallmarks, including mitochondrial dysfunction. In fact, as mitochondrial alterations appear prior to neuronal cell death at an early phase of a disease's onset, the study and modulation of mitochondrial alterations have emerged as promising strategies to predict and prevent neurotoxicity and neuronal cell death before the onset of cell viability alterations.

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Purpose: Enhanced cell proliferation in tumors can be associated with altered metabolic profiles and dramatic microenvironmental changes. Downfield magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has received increasing attention due to its ability to report on labile resonances of molecules not easily detected in upfield H MRS. Image-selected-in-vivo-spectroscopy-relaxation enhanced MRS (iRE-MRS) was recently introduced for acquiring short echo-time (TE) spectra.

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Introduction: Preeclampsia is a multi-system disorder unique to pregnancy responsible for a great part of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. The precise pathogenesis of this complex disorder is still unrevealed.

Methods: We examined the pathophysiological pathways involved in early-onset preeclampsia, a specific subgroup representing its most severe presentation, using LC-MS/MS metabolomic analysis based on multi-level extraction of lipids and small metabolites from maternal blood samples, collected at the time of diagnosis from 14 preeclamptic and six matched healthy pregnancies.

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Objectives: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most aggressive glial brain tumors, can metabolize glucose through glycolysis and mitochondrial oxidation pathways. While specific dependencies on those pathways are increasingly associated with treatment response, detecting such GBM subtypes in vivo remains elusive. Here, we develop a dynamic glucose-enhanced deuterium spectroscopy (DGE H-MRS) approach for differentially assessing glucose turnover rates through glycolysis and mitochondrial oxidation in mouse GBM and explore their association with histologic features of the tumor and its microenvironment.

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Mitochondria are key organelles involved in cellular survival, differentiation, and death induction. In this regard, mitochondrial morphology and/or function alterations are involved in stress-induced adaptive pathways, priming mitochondria for mitophagy or apoptosis induction. We have previously shown that the mitochondriotropic antioxidant AntiOxCIN (100 μM; 48 h) presented significant cytoprotective effect without affecting the viability of human hepatoma-derived (HepG2) cells.

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Alterations in mitochondrial dynamics, including their intracellular trafficking, are common early manifestations of neuronal degeneration. However, current methodologies used to study mitochondrial trafficking events rely on parameters that are primarily altered in later stages of neurodegeneration. Our objective was to establish a reliable applied statistical analysis to detect early alterations in neuronal mitochondrial trafficking.

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Preeclampsia (PE) and fetal growth restriction (FGR) are both placenta-mediated disorders with unclear pathogenesis. Metabolomics of maternal and fetal pairs might help in understanding these disorders. We recruited prospectively pregnancies with normotensive FGR, PE without FGR, PE + FGR and uncomplicated pregnancies as controls.

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The progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) into non-alcoholic steatohepatitis implicates multiple mechanisms, chief of which is mitochondrial dysfunction. However, the sequence of events underlying mitochondrial failure are still poorly clarified. In this work, male C57BL/6J mice were fed with a high-fat plus high-sucrose diet for 16, 20, 22, and 24 weeks to induce NAFL.

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Parkinson's Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder affecting more than 10 million people worldwide. Currently, PD has no cure and no early diagnostics methods exist. Mitochondrial dysfunction is presented in the early stages of PD, and it is considered an important pathophysiology component.

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Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), one of the deleterious stages of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, remains a significant cause of liver-related morbidity and mortality worldwide. In the current work, we used an exploratory data analysis to investigate time-dependent cellular and mitochondrial effects of different supra-physiological fatty acids (FA) overload strategies, in the presence or absence of fructose (F), on human hepatoma-derived HepG2 cells. We measured intracellular neutral lipid content and reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, mitochondrial respiration and morphology, and caspases activity and cell death.

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Purpose: Bowel motion is a significant source of artifacts in mouse abdominal MRI. Fasting and administration of hyoscine butylbromide (BUSC) have been proposed for bowel motion reduction but with inconsistent results and limited efficacy assessments. Here, we evaluate these regimes for mouse abdominal MRI at high field.

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Materials And Methods: Bark extracts of these plants (1 and 25 g/mL) were added 3 hours before coincubating H9c2 cardiomyoblasts with Dox (0.5 and 1 M) for 24 hours more. We measured cell mass and metabolic viability, mitochondrial transmembrane potential, superoxide anion content, and activity-like of caspase-3 and caspase-9 following treatment with the extracts and/or Dox.

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Since most models used to study neuronal dysfunction display disadvantages and ethical concerns, a fast and reproducible in vitro model to study mitochondria-related neurodegeneration is required. Here, we optimized and characterized a 3-day retinoic acid-based protocol to differentiate the SH-SY5Y cell line into a neuronal-like phenotype and investigated alterations in mitochondrial physiology and distribution. Differentiation was associated with p21-linked cell cycle arrest and an increase in cell mass and area, possibly associated with the development of neurite-like extensions.

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The appearance of alpha-synuclein-positive inclusion bodies (Lewy bodies) and the loss of catecholaminergic neurons are the primary pathological hallmarks of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the dysfunction of mitochondria has long been recognized as a key component in the progression of the disease. Dysfunctional mitochondria can in turn lead to dysregulation of calcium homeostasis and, especially in dopaminergic neurons, raised mean intracellular calcium concentration.

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