PANFOLI I.

The novel coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19) has rapidly spread and poses a great challenge to researchers, both in elucidating its pathogenic mechanism and developing effective treatments. It has been recently proposed that COVID-19 is an endothelial disease. Indeed, the COVID-19 virus binds to angiotensin-converting enzyme type 2...

COVID-19 has been proposed to be an endothelial disease, as endothelial damage and oxidative stress contribute to its systemic inflammatory and thrombotic events. Polyphenols, natural antioxidant compounds appear as promising agents to prevent and treat COVID-19. Polyphenols bind and inhibit the F1Fo-ATP synthase rotary catalysis. An early...

The existence of different conductive patterns in unmyelinated and myelinated axons is uncertain. It seems that considering exclusively physical electrical phenomena may be an oversimplification. A novel interpretation of the mechanism of nerve conduction in myelinated nerves is proposed, to explain how the basic mechanism of nerve conduction...

Understanding how biological systems convert and store energy is a primary purpose of basic research. However, despite Mitchell's chemiosmotic theory, we are far from the complete description of basic processes such as oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and photosynthesis. After more than half a century, the chemiosmotic theory may need...

MerTK (Mer Tyrosine Kinase) is a cell surface receptor that regulates phagocytosis of pho-toreceptor outer segments (POS) in retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells. POS phagocytosis is im-paired in several pathologies, including diabetes. In this study, we investigate whether hyperglyce-mic conditions may affect MerTK expression and activation...

Metformin (MTF) is the first-line therapy for type 2 diabetes (T2DM). The euglycemic effect of MTF is due to the inhibition of hepatic glucose production. Literature reports that the principal molecular mechanism of MTF is the activation of 5′-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) due to the decrement of ATP intracellular content consequent to...

The nervous system displays high energy consumption, apparently not fulfilled by mitochondria, which are underrepresented therein. The oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos) activity, a mitochondrial process that aerobically provides ATP, has also been reported also in the myelin sheath and the rod outer segment (OS) disks. Thus, commonalities and...

Dysfunction of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is associated with several diseases characterized by retinal degeneration, such as diabetic retinopathy (DR). However, it has recently been proposed that outer retinal neurons also participate in the damage triggering. Therefore, we have evaluated the possible crosstalk between RPE and...

Introduction: Exosomes are nanovesicles that play important functions in a variety of physiological and pathological conditions. They are powerful cell-to-cell communication tool thanks to the protein, mRNA, miRNA, and lipid cargoes they carry. They are also emerging as valuable diagnostic and prognostic biomarker sources. Urinary exosomes...

Glycemic variability (GV) is common in preterm infants. In the premature population, GV is a risk factor for morbidity and mortality. Both hypo- and hyperglycemia can impair neurodevelopment. We investigated the impact of continuous versus intermittent tube enteral feeding on GV. In our prospective observational study, 20 preterm infants with a...

Ultracentrifugationon sucrose density gradientappears to be the best purification protocol for extracellular vesicle (EVs) purification. After this step, to reduce disulfide bridges linking exogenous proteins to the vesicles, the collected samples are routinely washed and treated with dithiothreitol (DTT). Such incubations are performed at...

Liquid-chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) is currently the method of choice for untargeted metabolomic analysis. The availability of established protocols to achieve a high confidence identification of metabolites is crucial. The aim of this work is to describe the workflow that we have applied to build an...