Ricerc@Sapienza

Indicators developed through the hierarchical design form a complex system. This characteristic may require approaches allowing more concise views able to summarizing the complexity (synthesis).
Synthesis concerns different aspects of the system (Maggino, 2017):

Electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) have become popular as substitutes for conventional tobacco cigarettes or to aid quitting, but little is known about the potential risks to cardiovascular health for smokers and nonsmokers. We sought to compare the impact of E-cigarettes with conventional cigarettes on platelet function in healthy adult smokers and nonsmokers. A crossover single-blind study in 40 healthy participants (20 smokers, 20 nonsmokers, matched for age and sex) was conducted.

Significant advances in the understanding of the molecular determinants of fibrillogenesis can be expected from comparative studies of the aggregation propensities of proteins with highly homologous structures but different folding pathways. Here, we fully characterize, by means of stopped-flow, T-jump, CD and DSC experiments, the unfolding mechanisms of three highly homologous proteins, zinc binding Ros87 and Ml153-149 and zinc-lacking Ml452-151. The results indicate that the three proteins significantly differ in terms of stability and (un)folding mechanisms.

The amphiphilic Zn-salophen complexes have lately been receiving attention due to their
aggregation behaviour, dependent upon some experimental parameters, such as concentration
and polarity of solvents. The possibility to control their aggregation morphologies, and their
well known capability to accept one axially coordinated donor species make them suitable
candidates for the development of new materials with applications in sensing. The search of
new amphiphilic derivatives of Zn-salophenes is thus an active research field. Our group have

Bile acids are a very important class of natural surfactants, showing themselves and their derivatives as self-assembling materials. The morphology of the aggregates is dependent upon the substituents present both on the rigid steroid backbone and on the side chain. For this reason, they are very suitable for nanochemistry, sensing and drug delivery applications. In the last years, our group has been involved in a project concerning the preparation of bile acid derivatives bearing amino acid moieties either on the C-3 or on the lateral chain of the steroid polycyclic ring.

Chemical chaperones prevent protein aggregation. However, the use of chemical chaperones as drugs against diseases due to protein aggregation is limited by the very high active concentrations (mm range) required to mediate their effect. One of the most common chemical chaperones is 4-phenylbutyric acid (4-PBA). Despite its unfavorable pharmacokinetic properties, 4-PBA was approved as a drug to treat ornithine cycle diseases. Here, we report that 2-isopropyl-4-phenylbutanoic acid (5) has been found to be 2–10-fold more effective than 4-PBA in several in vitro models of protein aggregation.

The aim of this work was to investigate the aggregation of metallic iron nanoparticles in a Rushton equipped agitated vessel open at the atmosphere. The particles were synthetized using oxygen-free reagent solutions and subsequently were suspended in water in an open lab-scale agitated vessel. The particle size distribution, zeta-potential, pH and Fe(0) content were monitored over the time, up to the complete oxidation of the particles.