. Evaluation of the antioxidant and antiproliferative potential properties of phytocomplexes extracted from Mediterranean area fruits

Breast and cervical cancer represents the first and the second cause of death for women worldwide1,2. Therefore, new advanced chemotherapies applications are very urgently needed this cancer. High attention has been paid to natural compounds in fruits and vegetables with potential nutraceutical properties. In this regard, dietary polyphenols have been widely demonstrated to be able to not only reduce oxidative and inflammatory stress, but also decrease proliferation of cancer cells. However, the biological activity of various food plants has not yet been studied. This work aims to characterize the nutraceutical potential of four fruits such as, Malpighia emarginata (MEE), Arbutus unedo (AUE), Goji berries (LBE), Annona cherimola (ACE). For this reason, our study focused on the evaluation of antioxidant potential and antiproliferative activity of polyphenol extracts on cervical cancer (HeLa) and breast cancer (MCF-7) cell line

Integrated plasma metabolomics and lipidomics profiling highlights distinctive signature of hepatocellular carcinoma in HCV patients

Abstract Background Early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is essential towards the improvement of prognosis and patient survival. Circulating markers such as α-fetoprotein (AFP) and micro-RNAs represent useful tools but still have limitations. Identifying new markers can be fundamental to improve both diagnosis and prognosis. In this approach, we harness the potential of metabolomics and lipidomics to uncover potential signatures of HCC. Methods A combined untargeted metabolomics and lipidomics plasma profiling of 102 HCV-positive patients was performed by HILIC and RP-UHPLC coupled to Mass Spectrometry. Biochemical parameters of liver function (AST, ALT, GGT) and liver cancer biomarkers (AFP, CA19.9 e CEA) were evaluated by standard assays. Results HCC was characterized by an elevation of short and long-chain acylcarnitines, asymmetric dimethylarginine, methylguanine, isoleucylproline and a global reduction of lysophosphatidylcholines. A supervised PLS-DA model showed that the predictive accuracy for HCC class of metabolomics and lipidomics was superior to AFP for the test set (100.00% and 94.40% vs 55.00%). Additionally, the model was applied to HCC patients with AFP values < 20 ng/mL, and, by using only the top 20 variables selected by VIP scores achieved an Area Under Curve (AUC) performance of 0.94. Conclusion These exploratory findings highlight how metabo-lipidomics enables the distinction of HCC from chronic HCV conditions. The identified biomarkers have high diagnostic potential and could represent a viable tool to support and assist in HCC diagnosis, including AFP-negative patients. Graphical abstrac