2,049 research outputs found
Bright spots in the darkness of cancer: A review of starfishes-derived compounds and their anti-tumor action
The fight against cancer represents a great challenge for researchers and, for this reason, the search for new promising drugs to improve cancer treatments has become inevitable. Oceans, due to their wide diversity of marine species and environmental conditions have proven to be precious sources of potential natural drugs with active properties. As an example, in this context several studies performed on sponges, tunicates, mollusks, and soft corals have brought evidence of the interesting biological activities of the molecules derived from these species. Also, echinoderms constitute an important phylum, whose members produce a huge number of compounds with diverse biological activities. In particular, this review is the first attempt to summarize the knowledge about starfishes and their secondary metabolites that exhibited a significant anticancer effect against different human tumor cell lines. For each species of starfish, the extracted molecules, their effects, and mechanisms of action are described
In Vitro Cytotoxic Effect of Aqueous Extracts from Leaves and Rhizomes of the Seagrass Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile on HepG2 Liver Cancer Cells: Focus on Autophagy and Apoptosis
Aqueous extracts from Posidonia oceanica’s green and brown (beached) leaves and rhizomes
were prepared, submitted to phenolic compound and proteomic analysis, and examined for their
potential cytotoxic effect on HepG2 liver cancer cells in culture. The chosen endpoints related to
survival and death were cell viability and locomotory behavior, cell-cycle analysis, apoptosis and
autophagy, mitochondrial membrane polarization, and cell redox state. Here, we show that 24 h
exposure to both green-leaf- and rhizome-derived extracts decreased tumor cell number in a dose–
response manner, with a mean half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) estimated at 83 and
11.5 µg of dry extract/mL, respectively. Exposure to the IC50 of the extracts appeared to inhibit cell
motility and long-term cell replicating capacity, with a more pronounced effect exerted by the rhizomederived preparation. The underlying death-promoting mechanisms identified involved the downregulation of autophagy, the onset of apoptosis, the decrease in the generation of reactive oxygen
species, and the dissipation of mitochondrial transmembrane potential, although, at the molecular
level, the two extracts appeared to elicit partially differentiating effects, conceivably due to their
diverse composition. In conclusion, P. oceanica extracts merit further investigation to develop novel
promising prevention and/or treatment agents, as well as beneficial supplements for the formulation
of functional foods and food-packaging material with antioxidant and anticancer propertie
Measurements of low-pT electrons from semileptonic heavy-flavour hadron decays at mid-rapidity in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at 1asNN= 2.76 TeV
Transverse-momentum (pT) differential yields of electrons from semileptonic heavy-flavour hadron decays have been measured in the most central (0\u201310%) and in semi- central (20\u201340%) Pb\u2013Pb collisions at 1asNN = 2.76TeV. The corresponding production cross section in pp collisions has been measured at the same energy with substantially reduced systematic uncertainties with respect to previously published results. The modifi- cation of the yield in Pb\u2013Pb collisions with respect to the expectation from an incoherent superposition of nucleon-nucleon collisions is quantified at mid-rapidity (|y| < 0.8) in the pT interval 0.5\u20133GeV/c via the nuclear modification factor, RAA. This paper extends the pT reach of the RAA measurement towards significantly lower values with respect to a previous publication. In Pb\u2013Pb collisions the pT-differential measurements of yields at low pT are essential to investigate the scaling of heavy-flavour production with the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions. Heavy-quark hadronization, a collective expansion and even initial-state effects, such as the nuclear modification of the Parton Distribution Function, are also expected to have a significant effect on the measured distribution
INFN What Next: Ultra-relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
This document was prepared by the community that is active in Italy, within
INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), in the field of
ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The experimental study of the phase
diagram of strongly-interacting matter and of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP)
deconfined state will proceed, in the next 10-15 years, along two directions:
the high-energy regime at RHIC and at the LHC, and the low-energy regime at
FAIR, NICA, SPS and RHIC. The Italian community is strongly involved in the
present and future programme of the ALICE experiment, the upgrade of which will
open, in the 2020s, a new phase of high-precision characterisation of the QGP
properties at the LHC. As a complement of this main activity, there is a
growing interest in a possible future experiment at the SPS, which would target
the search for the onset of deconfinement using dimuon measurements. On a
longer timescale, the community looks with interest at the ongoing studies and
discussions on a possible fixed-target programme using the LHC ion beams and on
the Future Circular Collider.Comment: 99 pages, 56 figure
Multiplicity dependence of jet-like two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at = 5.02 TeV
Two-particle angular correlations between unidentified charged trigger and
associated particles are measured by the ALICE detector in p-Pb collisions at a
nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The transverse-momentum
range 0.7 5.0 GeV/ is examined,
to include correlations induced by jets originating from low
momen\-tum-transfer scatterings (minijets). The correlations expressed as
associated yield per trigger particle are obtained in the pseudorapidity range
. The near-side long-range pseudorapidity correlations observed in
high-multiplicity p-Pb collisions are subtracted from both near-side
short-range and away-side correlations in order to remove the non-jet-like
components. The yields in the jet-like peaks are found to be invariant with
event multiplicity with the exception of events with low multiplicity. This
invariance is consistent with the particles being produced via the incoherent
fragmentation of multiple parton--parton scatterings, while the yield related
to the previously observed ridge structures is not jet-related. The number of
uncorrelated sources of particle production is found to increase linearly with
multiplicity, suggesting no saturation of the number of multi-parton
interactions even in the highest multiplicity p-Pb collisions. Further, the
number scales in the intermediate multiplicity region with the number of binary
nucleon-nucleon collisions estimated with a Glauber Monte-Carlo simulation.Comment: 23 pages, 6 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 17,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/161
Multi-particle azimuthal correlations in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
Measurements of multi-particle azimuthal correlations (cumulants) for charged
particles in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions are presented. They help address the
question of whether there is evidence for global, flow-like, azimuthal
correlations in the p-Pb system. Comparisons are made to measurements from the
larger Pb-Pb system, where such evidence is established. In particular, the
second harmonic two-particle cumulants are found to decrease with multiplicity,
characteristic of a dominance of few-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions.
However, when a gap is placed to suppress such correlations,
the two-particle cumulants begin to rise at high-multiplicity, indicating the
presence of global azimuthal correlations. The Pb-Pb values are higher than the
p-Pb values at similar multiplicities. In both systems, the second harmonic
four-particle cumulants exhibit a transition from positive to negative values
when the multiplicity increases. The negative values allow for a measurement of
to be made, which is found to be higher in Pb-Pb collisions at
similar multiplicities. The second harmonic six-particle cumulants are also
found to be higher in Pb-Pb collisions. In Pb-Pb collisions, we generally find
which is indicative of a Bessel-Gaussian
function for the distribution. For very high-multiplicity Pb-Pb
collisions, we observe that the four- and six-particle cumulants become
consistent with 0. Finally, third harmonic two-particle cumulants in p-Pb and
Pb-Pb are measured. These are found to be similar for overlapping
multiplicities, when a gap is placed.Comment: 25 pages, 11 captioned figures, 3 tables, authors from page 20,
published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/87
Charge separation relative to the reaction plane in Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
Measurements of charge dependent azimuthal correlations with the ALICE
detector at the LHC are reported for Pb-Pb collisions at TeV. Two- and three-particle charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in
the pseudo-rapidity range are presented as a function of the
collision centrality, particle separation in pseudo-rapidity, and transverse
momentum. A clear signal compatible with a charge-dependent separation relative
to the reaction plane is observed, which shows little or no collision energy
dependence when compared to measurements at RHIC energies. This provides a new
insight for understanding the nature of the charge dependent azimuthal
correlations observed at RHIC and LHC energies.Comment: 12 pages, 3 captioned figures, authors from page 2 to 6, published
version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/286
A note on comonotonicity and positivity of the control components of decoupled quadratic FBSDE
In this small note we are concerned with the solution of Forward-Backward
Stochastic Differential Equations (FBSDE) with drivers that grow quadratically
in the control component (quadratic growth FBSDE or qgFBSDE). The main theorem
is a comparison result that allows comparing componentwise the signs of the
control processes of two different qgFBSDE. As a byproduct one obtains
conditions that allow establishing the positivity of the control process.Comment: accepted for publicatio
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