Gli esordi preraffaelliti di Dante Gabriel Rossetti: “Mary’s Girlhood” e The Girlhood of Mary Virgin

Right from the beginnings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s career, his most striking quality lies in his deep commitment to a continual interrelation between the arts of poetry and of painting. This essay aims at revealing the strategies applied to the intersemiotic process taking place between Rossetti’s first Pre-raphaelite canvas, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, and the two sonnets written to ‘illustrate’ it. To better examine the shift between different media and Rossetti’s own appraisal of such a translating process, reference has been made to some of the great names of the contemporary debate about intersemiotic translation, such as Greimas, Eco and Jakobson. By applying such modern tools of intersemiotic analysis to the artist’s first double work of art it will eventually be clear how Rossetti’s Pre-raphaelite phase is anything but an immature debut in the Victorian artistic scene. Many of the features of his early career are in fact to be found as faithfully maintained in the more complex development of his maturer art. This essay will show how The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and “Mary’s Girlhood” are to be considered as a true manifesto of Rossetti’s entire career and of his appraisal of the relation between the sister arts.Right from the beginnings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s career, his most striking quality lies in his deep commitment to a continual interrelation between the arts of poetry and of painting. This essay aims at revealing the strategies applied to the intersemiotic process taking place between Rossetti’s first Pre-raphaelite canvas, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, and the two sonnets written to ‘illustrate’ it. To better examine the shift between different media and Rossetti’s own appraisal of such a translating process, reference has been made to some of the great names of the contemporary debate about intersemiotic translation, such as Greimas, Eco and Jakobson. By applying such modern tools of intersemiotic analysis to the artist’s first double work of art it will eventually be clear how Rossetti’s Pre-raphaelite phase is anything but an immature debut in the Victorian artistic scene. Many of the features of his early career are in fact to be found as faithfully maintained in the more complex development of his maturer art. This essay will show how The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and “Mary’s Girlhood” are to be considered as a true manifesto of Rossetti’s entire career and of his appraisal of the relation between the sister arts

Gli esordi preraffaelliti di Dante Gabriel Rossetti: “Mary’s Girlhood” e The Girlhood of Mary Virgin

Right from the beginnings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s career, his most striking quality lies in his deep commitment to a continual interrelation between the arts of poetry and of painting. This essay aims at revealing the strategies applied to the intersemiotic process taking place between Rossetti’s first Pre-raphaelite canvas, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, and the two sonnets written to ‘illustrate’ it. To better examine the shift between different media and Rossetti’s own appraisal of such a translating process, reference has been made to some of the great names of the contemporary debate about intersemiotic translation, such as Greimas, Eco and Jakobson. By applying such modern tools of intersemiotic analysis to the artist’s first double work of art it will eventually be clear how Rossetti’s Pre-raphaelite phase is anything but an immature debut in the Victorian artistic scene. Many of the features of his early career are in fact to be found as faithfully maintained in the more complex development of his maturer art. This essay will show how The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and “Mary’s Girlhood” are to be considered as a true manifesto of Rossetti’s entire career and of his appraisal of the relation between the sister arts.Right from the beginnings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s career, his most striking quality lies in his deep commitment to a continual interrelation between the arts of poetry and of painting. This essay aims at revealing the strategies applied to the intersemiotic process taking place between Rossetti’s first Pre-raphaelite canvas, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, and the two sonnets written to ‘illustrate’ it. To better examine the shift between different media and Rossetti’s own appraisal of such a translating process, reference has been made to some of the great names of the contemporary debate about intersemiotic translation, such as Greimas, Eco and Jakobson. By applying such modern tools of intersemiotic analysis to the artist’s first double work of art it will eventually be clear how Rossetti’s Pre-raphaelite phase is anything but an immature debut in the Victorian artistic scene. Many of the features of his early career are in fact to be found as faithfully maintained in the more complex development of his maturer art. This essay will show how The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and “Mary’s Girlhood” are to be considered as a true manifesto of Rossetti’s entire career and of his appraisal of the relation between the sister arts

Caveolin-1: a mediator of Glioblastoma cell invasion and an independent negative biomarker of Glioblastoma patient survival

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a malignant and highly aggressive form of brain tumour, with extremely poor prognosis. One of its features is the ability of the tumour to invade through normal brain resulting in tumour relapse. Our hypothesis was that Caveolin-1 (Cav-1), a major component of the caveolae and recognized to be involved in a number of signalling pathways, has a key pro-invasive role in GBM. We pursued our hypothesis by inhibiting the expression of Cav-1 in different adult GBM cell lines using different genetic techniques (liposome shRNA, lentiviral shRNA and CRISPR). We found that Cav-1 drives clonogenicity (CHAPTER 3) and invasion in a combination of two- and three-dimensional models (CHAPTER 5). We focused our research on the invasion phenomenon and, in order to provide a robust quantification approach to study invasion in 3D spheroid assays, we developed (CHAPTER 4) a open-source semi-automated script, INSIDIA, available for all researchers in the community to use. This tool was used to quantify the impact of Cav-1 on invasive capacity. In in-vitro systems, we explored the impact of Cav-1 expression upon molecules associated with the invasion phenomenon (CHAPTER 5). We found Cav-1 to be associated with CTSB, MMP1 and UPA and receptors like UPAR and CD44, as well as AKT activation. Interrogating the “The Cancer Genome Atlas” (TCGA) database, we confirmed that Cav-1 is an independent biomarker of poor prognosis in GBM patients (CHAPTER 6). This clinical data also found association of genes that may cooperate with Cav-1, including CD44, ITGA3, VIM, CTSB, CTSL, TSP-1, TIMP1 and MT1MMP. Collectively this thesis provides strong in vitro and clinical data supporting that Cav-1 as a key molecule promoting GBM invasion, and further identifying Cav-1 as a potential drug discovery target in GBM

Caveolin-1 implicated as a pro-invasive gene in high-grade glioma cell models: implementation of a 3d spheroid matrix invasion assay

INTRODUCTION: The poor prognosis associated with Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is multifactorial but includes the capacity of residual tumour cells not removed by surgery and resistant to radio-/chemo-therapy undergoing diffuse invasion into the surrounding brain tissue. Caveolin-1 (Cav-1) is the major structural and functional component of caveolae. In a number of tumour types Cav-1 is recognised to participate in cytoskeletal rearrangement, integrin-mediated adhesion and/or matrix remodelling. We proposed Cav-1 serves to promote invasion of GBM cells. To investigate this we have employed in an in-vitro 3D cellular invasion assay. METHOD: The human GBM cell lines, UP007 and UP029 established from primary cultures of biopsy-derived brain tumours (University of Portsmouth), U-87 MG (ECACC) and U-373 MG (ECACC) were genetically modified to stably knock-out Cav-1 using a Lentiviral Cav-1 shRNA approach; corresponding stably transfected non-target (NT) shRNA cell lines were generated as controls. Neuropheres were formed and embedded within an extracellular matrix (Matrigel™). Over a two-/four-day period (depending on cell line) the migration of cells away from the neurophere core (CORE) was quantified by image capture and processing (Image J) using a custom-developed MatLab script for pixel density analysis indicative of the density of migrating cellular material. RESULTS: Cav-1 knockout resulted in significant (P0.05) towards reduced invasion. Depending upon the cell line the Cav-1 knockdown also resulted in reduced size and cellular density of the neurosphere core (UP007 and UP029) indicative of reduced proliferation and/or cell survival capacity. CONCLUSION: Using an in-vitro 3D cellular invasion assay we have found Cav-1 expression in a series of three GBM cell lines to promote cellular invasion capacity. Ongoing studies are addressing signalling mechanisms and the influence of the microenvironment

A comparative evaluation of 3 different free-form deformable image registration and contour propagation methods for head and neck MRI : the case of parotid changes radiotherapy

Purpose: To validate and compare the deformable image registration and parotid contour propagation process for head and neck magnetic resonance imaging in patients treated with radiotherapy using 3 different approachesthe commercial MIM, the open-source Elastix software, and an optimized version of it. Materials and Methods: Twelve patients with head and neck cancer previously treated with radiotherapy were considered. Deformable image registration and parotid contour propagation were evaluated by considering the magnetic resonance images acquired before and after the end of the treatment. Deformable image registration, based on free-form deformation method, and contour propagation available on MIM were compared to Elastix. Two different contour propagation approaches were implemented for Elastix software, a conventional one (DIR_Trx) and an optimized homemade version, based on mesh deformation (DIR_Mesh). The accuracy of these 3 approaches was estimated by comparing propagated to manual contours in terms of average symmetric distance, maximum symmetric distance, Dice similarity coefficient, sensitivity, and inclusiveness. Results: A good agreement was generally found between the manual contours and the propagated ones, without differences among the 3 methods; in few critical cases with complex deformations, DIR_Mesh proved to be more accurate, having the lowest values of average symmetric distance and maximum symmetric distance and the highest value of Dice similarity coefficient, although nonsignificant. The average propagation errors with respect to the reference contours are lower than the voxel diagonal (2 mm), and Dice similarity coefficient is around 0.8 for all 3 methods. Conclusion: The 3 free-form deformation approaches were not significantly different in terms of deformable image registration accuracy and can be safely adopted for the registration and parotid contour propagation during radiotherapy on magnetic resonance imaging. More optimized approaches (as DIR_Mesh) could be preferable for critical deformations

INSIDIA:a FIJI macro delivering high-throughput and high-content spheroid invasion analysis

Time-series image capture of in vitro 3D spheroidal cancer models embedded within an extracellular matrix affords examination of spheroid growth and cancer cell invasion. However, a customizable, comprehensive and open source solution for the quantitative analysis of such spheroid images is lacking. Here, the authors describe INSIDIA (INvasion SpheroID ImageJ Analysis), an open-source macro implemented as a customizable software algorithm running on the FIJI platform, that enables high-throughput high-content quantitative analysis of spheroid images (both bright-field gray and fluorescent images) with the output of a range of parameters defining the spheroid “tumor” core and its invasive characteristics

Caveolin-1, a key mediator across multiple pathways in glioblastoma and an independent negative biomarker of patient survival

Glioblastoma (GB) remains an aggressive malignancy with an extremely poor prognosis. Discovering new candidate drug targets for GB remains an unmet medical need. Caveolin-1 (Cav-1) has been shown to act variously as both a tumour suppressor and tumour promoter in many cancers. The implications of Cav-1 expression in GB remains poorly understood. Using clinical and genomic databases we examined the relationship between tumour Cav-1 gene expression (including its spatial distribution) and clinical pathological parameters of the GB tumour and survival probability in a TCGA cohort (n=155) and CGGA cohort (n=220) of GB patients. High expression of Cav-1 represented a significant independent predictor of shortened survival (HR = 2.985, 5.1 vs 14.9 months) with a greater statistically significant impact in female patients and in the Proneural and Mesenchymal GB subtypes. High Cav-1 expression correlated with other factors associated with poor prognosis: IDH w/t status, high histological tumour grade and low KPS score. A total of 4879 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the GB tumour were found to correlate with Cav-1 expression (either positively or negatively). Pathway enrichment analysis highlighted an over-representation of these DEGs to certain biological pathways. Focusing on those that lie within a framework of epithelial to mesenchymal transition and tumour cell migration and invasion we identified 27 of these DEGs. We then examined the prognostic value of Cav-1 when used in combination with any of these 27 genes and identified a subset of combinations (with Cav-1) indicative of co-operative synergistic mechanisms of action. Overall, the work has confirmed Cav-1 can serve as an independent prognostic marker in GB, but also augment prognosis when used in combination with a panel of biomarkers or clinicopathologic parameters. Moreover, Cav-1 appears to be linked to many signalling entities within the GB tumour and as such this work begins to substantiate Cav-1 or its associated signalling partners as candidate target for GB new drug discovery