201 research outputs found
A Twin Spiral Planar Antenna for UWB Medical Radars
No full textA planar-spiral antenna to be used in an ultrawideband (UWB) radar system for heart activity monitoring is presented. The antenna, named “twin,” is constituted by two spiral dipoles in a compact structure. The reflection coefficient at the feed point of the dipoles is lower than −8 dB over the 3–12 GHz band, while the two-dipoles coupling is about −20 dB. The radiated beam is perpendicular to the plane of the spiral, so the antenna is wearable and it may be an optimal radiator for a medical UWB radar for heart rate detection. The designed antenna has been also used to check some hypotheses about the UWB radar heart activity detection mechanism. The radiation impedance variation, caused by the thorax vibrations associated with heart activity, seems to be the most likely explanation of the UWB radar operation
Salivary proteome modifications in pediatric oncological patients
No full textAim. The human salivary proteome characterization wants to identify proteins, in order to associate their presence (or absence) and their different level of expression to different physiological conditions or to a particular disease. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the salivary proteome modifications that occur in children with oncologic diseases, undergoing chemo or radiotherapy, comparing them to healthy pediatric patients salivary peptides. Some proteins, in particular, were quantified in order to evaluate their possible role as disease and/or inflammation biomarkers and their possible use in early diagnosis, prognosis, therapeutic monitoring and response to anticancer treatment.
Methods. To investigate if oncological children salivary proteome differs from that of healthy children, and in order to understand how it evolves during the subsequent cycles of anticancer therapy, the acidic soluble fraction of whole saliva of 12 children with cancer (8 females and 4 males) was analyzed by RP-HPLC-ESI-MS and compared to 12 controlsubjects (8 females and 4 males), all aged between 0 and 14 years. Healthy children were subjected to only one sample, differently from oncological children who were subjected to a variable number of samples: the first one at the diagnosis, the others after each treatment cycle, in order to define the changes in salivary proteome during the different stages of anticancer therapy. The proteins we analyzed were, in particular, defensins (α1, α2, α3 e α4), cystatin A and cystatin B (unmodified, Sglutathionyl, S-cysteinyl).
All proteins, although not primarily glandular, represent a potential index of localized or diffuse tumors, being widely recognized for them a role in the immune system.
The protein concentration trend of each sample was compared in this way: first it was observed, for each oncologic patient, how the concentration of each protein is modified during the treatment, by relating the different samples from the same child; then these same patients were compared to the control group (healthy children).
Results. Protein and peptide quantification based on the area of the RP-HPLC-ESI-MS extracted ion current peak evidenced in particular that: I) there is a little quantity of α-defensins and cystatins in healthy children; II) α-defensins 1, 2, 3 are significantly increased in oncological patients (P<0,005), compared with healthy subjects, at the moment of the diagnosis; III) the concentration of these proteins decreases to the control level, after the treatment.
Conclusion. The most significant data is the important difference between healthy and ill subjects for α-defensins 1, 2 and 3, which makes them potential biomarkers of localized or diffuse cancer. The high levels of these peptides might be a sign of their involvement in innate immune response, especially in the earliest stages of tumor development, as a product of local inflammatory response (linked to the proliferative-necrotic and antigenic activity of tumor cells) and as well as a systemic effect of homeostasis change in the whole organism.
α-defensins reduction, which was observed after radio-chemotherapy, could be due to the effect of the direct cytotoxic treatment on epithelial cells, which is able to reduce the secretory activity, or to its immunosuppressant and immuno-modulator effects on cell recruitment from the innate immune system, as well as to a combination of both described mechanisms. As these proteins decrease already in the first cycle of treatment and reach control-similar values, they may play an important role in cancer therapeutic monitoring
Modulation of Prion by Small Molecules: From Monovalent to Bivalent and Multivalent Ligands
No full textPrion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative disorders that affect humans and animals and for which no pharmacological treatment is available. Compounds consisting of two identical moieties joined via an appropriate spacer (i.e. bivalent compounds) have turned out to be effective tools to prevent prion fibril formation and exhibit an improved biological profile with regard to the corresponding monovalent derivatives. In this review we discuss the importance of the bivalent strategy as a viable approach to design new chemical entities to combat prion diseases
Discussione su "Nord Est: metamorfosi di un modello" e "Il Nord Est nel comfronto europeo"
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Solvent- and chromatography-free amination of pi-deficient nitrogen heterocycles under microwave irradiation. A fast, efficient and green route to 9-aminoacridines, 4-aminoquinolines and 4-aminoquinazolines and its application to the synthesis of the drugs amsacrine and bistacrine
No full textFocused microwave irradiation of equimolecular mixtures of 9-chloroacridines, 4-chloroquinolines and 4-chloroquinazolines with amines in the presence of 2 equiv of phenol allows the general, fast and high-yielding synthesis of aminated heterocycles, with a very broad scope in terms of amine structure (aromatic, linear primary aliphatic, α-branched primary aliphatic, secondary aliphatic and diamines). Workup consisted of a simple washing with water and purification could be achieved by crystallization, avoiding the use of organic solvents in extraction and chromatographic purification steps. This protocol provides a solution to the long-standing synthetic problem of achieving a practical and efficient method for the amination of pi-deficient nitrogen heterocycles for medicinal chemistry applications
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