Search

Extracellular vesicles (EVs), acting as inherent nanocarriers adept at transporting a range of different biological molecules such as proteins, lipids, and genetic material, exhibit diverse functions within the gastroenteric tract. In states of normal health, they participate in the upkeep of systemic and organ homeostasis. Conversely, in pathological conditions, they significantly contribute to the pathogenesis of gastrointestinal diseases (GIDs). Isolating EVs from patients’ biofluids facilitates the discovery of new biomarkers that have the potential to offer a rapid, cost-effective, and non-invasive method for diagnosing and prognosing specific GIDs. Furthermore, EVs demonstrate considerable therapeutic potential as naturally targeted physiological carriers for the intercellular delivery of therapeutic cargo molecules or as nanoscale tools engineered specifically to regulate physio-pathological conditions or disease progression. Their attributes including safety, high permeability, stability, biocompatibility, low immunogenicity, and homing/tropism capabilities contribute to their promising clinical therapeutic applications. This review will delve into various examples of EVs serving as biomarkers or nanocarriers for therapeutic cargo in the context of GIDs, highlighting their clinical potential for both functional and structural gastrointestinal conditions. The versatile and advantageous properties of EVs position them as promising candidates for innovative therapeutic strategies in advancing personalized medicine approaches tailored to the gastroenteric tract, addressing both functional and structural GIDs.

The intestine is essential for the modulation of nutrient absorption and the removal of waste. Gut pathologies, such as cancer, inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and celiac disease, which extensively impact gut functions, are thus critical for human health. Targeted drug delivery is essential to tackle these diseases, improve therapy efficacy, and minimize side effects. Recent strategies have taken advantage of both active and passive nanocarriers, which are designed to protect the drug until it reaches the correct delivery site and to modulate drug release via the use of different physical–chemical strategies. In this systematic review, we present a literature overview of the different nanocarriers used for drug delivery in a set of chronic intestinal pathologies, highlighting the rationale behind the controlled release of intestinal therapies. The overall aim is to provide the reader with useful information on the current approaches for gut targeting in novel therapeutic strategies.

The evaluation of cell elasticity is becoming increasingly significant, since it is now known that it impacts physiological mechanisms, such as stem cell differentiation and embryogenesis, as well as pathological processes, such as cancer invasiveness and endothelial senescence. However, the results of single-cell mechanical measurements vary considerably, not only due to systematic instrumental errors but also due to the dynamic and non-homogenous nature of the sample. In this work, relying on Chiaro nanoindenter (Optics11Life), we characterized in depth the nanoindentation experimental procedure, in order to highlight whether and how experimental conditions could affect measurements of living cell stiffness. We demonstrated that the procedure can be quite insensitive to technical replicates and that several biological conditions, such as cell confluency, starvation and passage, significantly impact the results. Experiments should be designed to maximally avoid inhomogeneous scenarios to avoid divergences in the measured phenotype.

Technology-aided hand functional assessment has received considerable attention in recent years. Its applications are required to obtain objective, reliable, and sensitive methods for clinical decision making. This systematic review aims to investigate and discuss characteristics of technology-aided hand functional assessment and their applications, in terms of the adopted sensing technology, evaluation methods and purposes. Based on the shortcomings of current applications, and opportunities offered by emerging systems, this review aims to support the design and the translation to clinical practice of technology-aided hand functional assessment. To this end, a systematic literature search was led, according to recommended PRISMA guidelines, in PubMed and IEEE Xplore databases. The search yielded 208 records, resulting into 23 articles included in the study. Glove-based systems, instrumented objects and body-networked sensor systems appeared from the search, together with vision-based motion capture systems, end-effector, and exoskeleton systems. Inertial measurement unit (IMU) and force sensing resistor (FSR) resulted the sensing technologies most used for kinematic and kinetic analysis. A lack of standardization in system metrics and assessment methods emerged. Future studies that pertinently discuss the pathophysiological content and clinimetrics properties of new systems are required for leading technologies to clinical acceptance.

The growing need for interoperability among the different oceanic monitoring systems to deliver services able to answer the requirements of stakeholders and end-users led to the development of a low-cost machine-to-machine communication system able to guarantee data reliability over marine paths. In this framework, an experimental evaluation of the performance of long-range (LoRa) technology in a fully operational marine scenario has been proposed. In-situ tests were carried out exploiting the availability of (i) a passenger vessel and (ii) a research vessel operating in the Ligurian basin (North-Western Mediterranean Sea) both hosting end-nodes, and (iii) gateways positioned on mountains and hills in the inland areas. Packet loss ratio, packet reception rate, received signal strength indicator, signal to noise, and expected signal power ratio were chosen as metrics in line of sight and not the line of sight conditions. The reliability of Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) transmission over the sea has been demonstrated up to more than 110 km in a free space scenario and for more than 20 km in a coastal urban environment.

Nucleic acid (NA) extraction is a basic step for genetic analysis, from scientific research to diagnostic and forensic applications. It aims at preparing samples for its application with biomolecular technologies such as isothermal and non-isothermal amplification, hybridization, electrophoresis, Sanger sequencing and next-generation sequencing. Multiple steps are involved in NA collection from raw samples, including cell separation from the rest of the specimen, cell lysis, NA isolation and release. Typically, this process needs molecular biology facilities, specialized instrumentation and labor-intensive operations. Microfluidic devices have been developed to analyze NA samples with high efficacy and sensitivity. In this context, the integration within the chip of the sample preparation phase is crucial to leverage the promise of portable, fast, user-friendly and economic point-of-care solutions. This review presents an overview of existing lab-on-a-chip (LOC) solutions designed to provide automated NA extraction from human raw biological fluids, such as whole blood, excreta (urine and feces), saliva. It mainly focuses on LOC implementation aspects, aiming to describe a detailed panorama of strategies implemented for different human raw sample preparations.

The culture of progenitor mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) onto osteoconductive materials to induce a proper osteogenic differentiation and mineralized matrix regeneration represents a promising and widely diffused experimental approach for tissue-engineering (TE) applications in orthopaedics. Among modern biomaterials, calcium phosphates represent the best bone substitutes, due to their chemical features emulating the mineral phase of bone tissue. Although many studies on stem cells differentiation mechanisms have been performed involving calcium-based scaffolds, results often focus on highlighting production of in vitro bone matrix markers and in vivo tissue ingrowth, while information related to the biomolecular mechanisms involved in the early cellular calcium-mediated differentiation is not well elucidated yet. Genetic programs for osteogenesis have been just partially deciphered, and the description of the different molecules and pathways operative in these differentiations is far from complete, as well as the activity of calcium in this process. The present work aims to shed light on the involvement of extracellular calcium in MSC differentiation: a better understanding of the early stage osteogenic differentiation program of MSC seeded on calcium-based biomaterials is required in order to develop optimal strategies to promote osteogenesis through the use of new generation osteoconductive scaffolds. A wide spectrum of analysis has been performed on time-dependent series: gene expression profiles are obtained from samples (MSC seeded on calcium-based scaffolds), together with related microRNAs expression and in vivo functional validation. On this basis, and relying on literature knowledge, hypotheses are made on the biomolecular players activated by the biomaterial calcium-phosphate component. Interestingly, a key role of miR-138 was highlighted, whose inhibition markedly increases osteogenic differentiation in vitro and enhance ectopic bone formation in vivo. Moreover, there is evidence that Ca-P substrate triggers osteogenic differentiation through genes (SMAD and RAS family) that are typically regulated during dexamethasone (DEX) induced differentiation.

This paper describes a calibration technique aimed at combined estimation of onboard and external magnetic disturbances for small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). In particular, the objective is to estimate the onboard horizontal bias components and the external magnetic declination, thus improving heading estimation accuracy. This result is important to support flight autonomy, even in environments characterized by significant magnetic disturbances. Moreover, in general, more accurate attitude estimates provide benefits for georeferencing and mapping applications. The approach exploits cooperation with one or more “deputy” UAVs and combines drone-to-drone carrier phase differential GNSS and visual measurements to attain magnetic-independent attitude information. Specifically, visual and GNSS information is acquired at different heading angles, and bias estimation is modelled as a non-linear least squares problem solved by means of the Levenberg–Marquardt method. An analytical error budget is derived to predict the achievable accuracy. The method is then demonstrated in flight using two customized quadrotors. A pointing analysis based on ground and airborne control points demonstrates that the calibrated heading estimate allows obtaining an angular error below 1°, thus resulting in a substantial improvement against the use of either the non-calibrated magnetic heading or the multi-sensor-based solution of the DJI onboard navigation filter, which determine angular errors of the order of several degrees.