Ricerc@Sapienza

Introduction: Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a liver cancer derived from the biliary tree with a less than 30% five-year survival rate. Early diagnosis of CCA is challenging and treatment options are limited. Some CCA patients have genetic mutations and several therapeutic drugs or antibodies have been introduced to target abnormally expressed proteins. However, CCA is heterogeneous and patients often present with drug resistance which is attributed to multiple mutations or other factors. Novel approaches and methodologies for CCA treatments are in demand.

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a rare neuroendocrine tumor comprising hereditary or sporadic form with frequent mutations in the rearranged during transfection (RET) or RAS genes. Diagnosis is based on presence of thyroid tumor mass with altered levels of calcitonin (Ctn) and carcinoembryonal antigen (CEA) in the serum and/or in the cytological smears from fine needle aspiration biopsies. Treatment consists of total thyroidectomy, followed by tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKi) in case of disease persistence.

Evaluating the expression levels of miR-378a-5p both in a large melanoma patient cohort from The Cancer Genome Atlas database and in melanoma patients from our Institute, we found that miR-378a-5p is upregulated in metastatic melanoma specimens. miR-378a-5p expression was also increased in melanoma cells resistant to target therapy, and decreased in response to drug treatment. We also demonstrated that overexpression of miR-378a-5p enhances in vitro cell invasion and migration, and facilitates the ability of melanoma cells to form de novo vasculogenic structures.

Purpose: We aimed at evaluating the feasibility of using MicroRNA (miR)-34a and miR-29b to detect inner ear damage in patients with mitochondrial disease (MD) and sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Material and Methods: Three patients with MD and SNHL and seven healthy control subjects were included in this case series. MD patients underwent pure tone audiometry (PTA), distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) and auditory brain response tests to investigate the specific cochlear and retrocochlear functions; control patients underwent PTA.

Purpose: A relevant challenge for the improvement of clear cell renal cell carcinoma management could derive from the identification of novel molecular biomarkers that could greatly improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment choice of these neoplasms. In this study, we investigate whether quantitative parameters obtained from computed tomography texture analysis may correlate with the expression of selected oncogenic microRNAs.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the expression of microRNA (miR)-551b in patients with low and high grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and to find an association with high-risk Human Papillomavirus (HR-HPV) infection-related prognostic biomarkers.

BACKGROUND/AIM:
To date, the combination of gastroscopy with biopsy remains the only test validated for screening gastric cancer (GC). Currently, analysis of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs or miRs) is providing interesting information on GC prognosis, but since these molecules are shared by several types of cancer, its clinical use could be questionable and difficult. MicroRNAs in gastric juice (GJ) could represent a cogent alternative to screening GC by biopsy.

Recent studies show that microRNA-34 (miR-34) family is critical in the regulation of stress response also suggesting that it may contribute to the individual responsiveness to stress.We have recently demonstrated that mice carrying a genetic deletion of allmiR- 34 isoforms (triple knockout, TKO) lack the stress-induced serotonin (5-HT) and GABA release in the medial prefrontal cortex (mpFC) and basolateral amygdala (BLA), respectively.

Parents' stressful experiences can influence an offspring's vulnerability to many pathological conditions, including psychopathologies, and their effects may even endure for several generations. Nevertheless, the cause of this phenomenon has not been determined, and only recently have scientists turned to epigenetics to answer this question. There is extensive literature on epigenetics, but no consensus exists with regard to how and what can (and must) be considered to study and define epigenetics processes and their inheritance.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: The identification of non- invasive biomarkers for the diagnosis and responsiveness to therapy of ccRCC may represent a relevant step-forward in ccRCC management. The aim of this study is to evaluate whether specific miRNAs deregulated in ccRCC tissues present altered levels also in urine specimens.