Ricerc@Sapienza

One of the main prerequisite of a therapeutic drug is to overcome a series of physiological barriers and it to be less toxic for the human. To this aim, it is necessary to find a carrying vector able to enhance drug internalization and to improve its therapeutic efficacy. Presently, biocompatible and biodegradable nanoparticles (NPs) as some effective drug delivery devices, are widely studied.

Extensive and improper utilization of water from industrial, municipal, and agricultural activities generate 380 trillion L/y of wastewater worldwide. Wastewaters from different sources contain enormous amounts of nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Thus, the recovery of these nutrients via appropriate sustainable process becomes a necessity. Among various processes microalgae-based technologies has attracted considerable attention and its strategies for sustainable and low-cost treatment of wastewater has allowed removal of over 70% nutrient loads from the wastewater.

Introduction: nuclear medicine plays a crucial role for personalized therapy, mainly in oncology. chemotherapy and radiotherapy present some disadvantages and research is shifting toward nanotechnology with significant improvements in therapy and diagnosis of several cancers. indeed, nanoparticles can be tagged with different radioisotopes for single photon emission computed tomography (SPecT) and positron emission tomography (PeT) imaging and for therapy. This review describes the current state of the art of 64copper-labeled nanoparticles for PeT imaging of cancer.

Surface reactivity of a fibrous tremolite sample from Castelluccio Superiore (Italy) was investigated by means of free radical generation following incubation in H2O2solution buffered at pH 7.4, for several time points, ranging from 1 day to 1 month. Results obtained were compared with those of another fibrous tremolite sample (from Maryland, USA), with much smaller surface area. Structural, morphological, and chemical alterations induced on tremolite by incubation were investigated by HR-TEM/EDS.

The blooming of nanotechnology has made available a limitless landscape of solutions responding to crucial issues in many fields and, nowadays, a wide choice of nanotechnology-based strategies can be adopted to circumvent the limitations of conventional therapies for cancer. Herein, the current stage of nanotechnological applications for cancer management is summarized encompassing the core nanomaterials as well as the available chemical–physical approaches for their surface functionalization and drug ligands as possible therapeutic agents.

Uncontrolled MAPK signaling is the main oncogenic driver in metastatic melanomas bearing mutations in BRAF kinase. These tumors are currently treated with the combination of BRAF/MEK inhibitors (MAPKi), but this therapy is plagued by drug resistance. In this context we recently discovered that several microRNAs are involved in the development of drug resistance. In particular miR-204-5p and miR-199b-5p were found to function as antagonists of resistance because their enforced overexpression is able to inhibit melanoma cell growth in vitro either alone or in combination with MAPKi.

In this contribution, two different strategies are discussed to synthesize cobalt nanostructures: direct cobalt electrodeposition on a planar aluminum electrode and cobalt electrodeposition into nanoporous alumina templates generated by aluminum anodization (template electrodeposition). In the direct electrodeposition of cobalt on aluminum, cobalt nanoparticles are formed during the early stage of electrodeposition, which causes the depletion of cobalt ions near the electrode.

In this work, an innovative hydrometallurgical recycling route for the recovery of all the materials composing Li-MnO2 primary batteries was proposed. End-of-life batteries were mechanically treated in an innovative pilot plant where a cryogenic crushing was performed. The mechanical treatment allowed for the release of the electrodic powder contained in the batteries with the simultaneous recovery of 44 kg of steel and 18 kg of plastics from 100 kg of batteries. Electrodic powder was employed as the raw material for the synthesis of LiMnPO4 nanoparticles.

Manganese ferrite nanoparticles were prepared by microwave-sonication assisted hydrothermal route and produced from wastes of Li-ion batteries and pyrite ash. The leaching solution of waste pyrite ash was used as the Fe source while the Mn-bearing solution recovered from the Li-ion battery recycling process was used as the Mn source. X-ray diffractometry showed that manganese ferrite can be obtained as single crystalline phase. Scanning electron microscope images showed that double-pyramid or octahedral particles were formed with an average size of 24.3 nm.

Following exposure to human plasma (HP), nanoparticles (NPs) are coated with a biomolecular layer referred to as a protein corona. We recently revealed that characterizing the protein coronas of various NPs may provide a unique opportunity for cancer identification and discrimination. In other words, protein corona profiles of several NPs, when being analyzed using classifiers, would provide a unique "fingerprint"for each type of disease.