EMT and induction of miR-21 mediate metastasis development in Trp53-deficient tumours

Missense mutations in TP53 gene promote metastasis in human tumours. However, little is known about the complete loss of function of p53 in tumour metastasis. Here we show that squamous cell carcinomas generated by the specific ablation of Trp53 gene in mouse epidermis are highly metastatic. Biochemical and genome-wide mRNA and miRNA analyses demonstrated that metastases are associated with the early induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and deregulated miRNA expression in primary tumours. Increased expression of miR-21 was observed in undifferentiated, prometastatic mouse tumours and in human tumours characterized by p53 mutations and distant metastasis. The augmented expression of miR-21, mediated by active mTOR and Stat3 signalling, conferred increased invasive properties to mouse keratinocytes in vitro and in vivo, whereas blockade of miR-21 in a metastatic spindle cell line inhibits metastasis development. Collectively these data identify novel molecular mechanisms leading to metastasis in vivo originated by p53 loss in epithelia

Design and experimental testing of an optimization-based flow control algorithm for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper a distributed flow control law is proposed to maximize throughput and to minimize energy consumption in Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs). We preliminary recast the control problem in terms of primal–dual optimization one taking into account the bandwidth and energy autonomy node constraint. Then, we devise a distributed flow rate control implemented at each node that allows the overall network to converge to the optimal solution of the original problem. The closed loop EH-WSN stability and convergence to the optimal equilibrium are proven. The effectiveness of the proposed control law in terms of throughput and network lifetime performance is experimentally validated by a small representative EH-WSN. The experimental results are in a good agreement with the theoretical ones

Stopshock Project

Il Progetto si propone di indentificare e validare principi attivi salvavita di pronto impiego per uso civile (medicina delle catastrofi) e militare (missioni peace keeping) - Il Progetto \ue8 promosso dal Ministero della Difesa e prevede la partecipazione di esperti di altri paesi