Paediatric gastric organoids as a tool for disease modelling and clinical translation

Purpose: Knowledge of gastric epithelial homeostasis remains incomplete, lacking human-specific models for study. This study establishes a protocol for deriving gastric epithelial organoids from paediatric gastric biopsies, providing a platform for modelling disease and developing translational therapies. Methods: Full-thickness surgical samples and endoscopic mucosal biopsies were obtained from six patients. Gastric glands were isolated by a chemical chelation protocol and then plated in 3D culture in Matrigel® droplets in chemically defined medium. After formation, organoids were passaged by single cell dissociation or manual disaggregation. Cell composition and epithelial polarity of organoids were assessed by bright field microscopy and immunofluorescence analysis, comparing them to native paediatric gastric tissue. Results: Gastric glands were successfully isolated from all six patients who were aged 4 months to 16 years. Gastric glands from all patients sealed to form spherical gastric organoids. These organoids could be passaged by manual disaggregation or single cell dissociation, remaining proliferative up to 1 year in culture. Organoids retained normal epithelial cell polarity, with the apical surface orientated towards the central lumen. Organoids expressed markers of mature gastric epithelial cell types, except for parietal cells. Conclusion: Gastric organoids can be reliably generated from paediatric biopsies and are a representative in vitro model for studying gastric epithelium

Primary human organoids models: Current progress and key milestones

During the past 10 years the world has experienced enormous progress in the organoids field. Human organoids have shown huge potential to study organ development, homeostasis and to model diseases in vitro. The organoid technology has been widely and increasingly applied to generate patient-specific in vitro 3D cultures, starting from both primary and reprogrammed stem/progenitor cells. This has consequently fostered the development of innovative disease models and new regenerative therapies. Human primary, or adult stem/progenitor cell-derived, organoids can be derived from both healthy and pathological primary tissue samples spanning from fetal to adult age. The resulting 3D culture can be maintained for several months and even years, while retaining and resembling its original tissue’s properties. As the potential of this technology expands, new approaches are emerging to further improve organoid applications in biology and medicine. This review discusses the main organs and tissues which, as of today, have been modelled in vitro using primary organoid culture systems. Moreover, we also discuss the advantages, limitations, and future perspectives of primary human organoids in the fields of developmental biology, disease modelling, drug testing and regenerative medicine

Effect of different pre-slaughter procedures on behavioural and blood parameters in pigs.

The effect of different pre-slaughter procedures on behavioural and blood parameters were evaluated on 120 pigs reared in one farm and delivered in groups of 40 subjects to three slaughterouses. Due to the different attitude of the personnel involved, differences in handling were evident at loading and at unloading where the difficulties to srive the pigs incresed the behaviuoral events. Blood analysis parameter showed that different resting time did not reduce the physical stress exoerienced by the pigs, which seems related "per se" to loading, transport and unloading and not to the different handling applied in each slaughter plant

Health surveillance for former asbestos exposed worker: a specific programme developed in an Italian region

Asbestos-related diseases usually have a long latency since first exposure and this legitimates a health surveillance programme addressed to asbestos workers after the cessation of their occupational exposure. After a brief history of health surveillance initiatives performed in Italy as well as in other countries, we describe a regional programme for former asbestos-exposed workers, focusing on organizational features. A regional group of experts defined its operational and economical aspects. The Regional Council supported the whole programme, making it free of charge for all subjects who fulfil the predefined enrolment criteria (being resident in the region, being younger than 80 years old with cessation of occupational asbestos exposure within the last 30 years). The programme activities are classified in two levels: a first level for a basic health evaluation and a second level for in-depth analyses. In order to guarantee an homogeneous delivery in the whole region, the programme has to be performed by public health services with a quality control of activities. The involvement of specific public health services and the cooperation of social stakeholders are expected to play a major role in overcoming still open critical issues, such as the lack of programme existence awareness and adhesion, the correct stratification of subjects for the follow-up, and the real homogeneous delivery of the health surveillance in whole region

Health surveillance for former asbestos exposed worker: a specific programme developed in an Italian region

Asbestos-related diseases usually have a long latency since first exposure and this legitimates a health surveillance programme addressed to asbestos workers after the cessation of their occupational exposure. After a brief history of health surveillance initiatives performed in Italy as well as in other countries, we describe a regional programme for former asbestos-exposed workers, focusing on organizational features. A regional group of experts defined its operational and economical aspects. The Regional Council supported the whole programme, making it free of charge for all subjects who fulfil the predefined enrolment criteria (being resident in the region, being younger than 80 years old with cessation of occupational asbestos exposure within the last 30 years). The programme activities are classified in two levels: a first level for a basic health evaluation and a second level for in-depth analyses. In order to guarantee an homogeneous delivery in the whole region, the programme has to be performed by public health services with a quality control of activities. The involvement of specific public health services and the cooperation of social stakeholders are expected to play a major role in overcoming still open critical issues, such as the lack of programme existence awareness and adhesion, the correct stratification of subjects for the follow-up, and the real homogeneous delivery of the health surveillance in whole region

High resolution parallel FDTD simulation of plasmonic nanostructures

High performance computing (HPC) resources allow us to perform high resolution FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain) simulations reaching a space discretization in the order of 0.1 nm for a 3D domain. A parallel message passing interface (MPI) FDTD in-house code has been run on an IBM BlueGene/Q supercomputer [1]. Three nanoantennas (nanosphere, dipole and bow-tie) of gold and silver have been studied. The dispersion modelling is based on the Drude equation with the two critical points correction [2]. The extinction, scattering and absorption coefficients have been calculated varying the mesh size. The classical staircasing approach is compared with a sub-cell one, where the material parameters are assigned for each electric field component of the Yee cell. The results show which discretization approach is better for each of the nanostructures and in which conditions round-off errors appear

A migration methodology for factories digital transformation

Over the last years, several technologies and control systems have been de-veloped towards the decentralization of automation control architectures for cyber-physical production systems. Nevertheless, only few of these technol-ogies are already in use. To support their adoption in brownfield production sites migration strategies and business case evaluations are necessary. This paper presents a migration approach and a business case evaluation method-ology tailored to the migration of legacy automation systems towards the In-dustry 4.0 paradigm. The proposed approach aims to evaluate opportunities and mitigate the risks of migration from technical, operational, human and business perspectives. The methodology follows an iterative approach start-ing from the definition of the current situation of the factory and the identi-fication of business goals aiming at evaluating a set of possible migration paths and selecting the optimal one according to a cost-benefit analysis. The paper concludes with an exemplary application of the methodology in a real industrial environment, developed within the FAR-EDGE European Project

Effect of long transport and environmental conditions on behaviour and blood parameters of postweaned piglets with different reactivity to backtest

none8siIn order to evaluate the effect of long transport on weaned piglets transported under warm weather conditions, one-hundred and forty-four piglets, previously submitted to a backtest during nursing, were monitored during four journeys, each lasting 14 hours, carried out from May to September 2009. Into the truck, piglets were allocated in 8 pens on the basis of backtest classification identified as High Resisting (HR), Low resisting (LR), Mixed (M) and Mixed at Loading (MAL). During transport, truck air temperature, skin temperatures and postural and behavioural occurrences were recorded. Prior to and after transportation, blood samples and body weight were also recorded. Piglets lost 5% of their body weight. Environmental conditions affected slightly the behaviour of piglets which were more active during the first 4 hours of transport. The behaviour of the piglets was significantly influenced by the type of pen since some differences in biting and exploratory behaviours were found in M pens. Conversely, no differences were found between HR and LR pens. Significant variations with respect to the baseline levels were found only for glucose which decreased and for urea which increased after journey as a result of the prolonged fasting. In general, the results suggest that long-lasting journeys did not have consistent effects on physiological and behavioural parameters of early-weaned piglets while grouping and mixing procedures may affect how they cope with transport.noneDiego Magnani;Simona Cafazzo;Pietro Cal?;Elisabetta Razzuoli;Massimo Amadori;Daniele Bernardini;Gabriele Gerardi;Leonardo Nanni CostaDiego Magnani;Simona Cafazzo;Pietro Cal?;Elisabetta Razzuoli;Massimo Amadori;Daniele Bernardini;Gabriele Gerardi;Leonardo Nanni Cost

Plasmonic Scattering by Silver Nanoparticles for Silicon Solar Cells: Modelling and Experimental Results

Silver nanoparticles can be used as light scattering elements for enhancing the energy conversion efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells. The present work provides a joint experimental/computational contribution in this respect by considering the application of silver plasmonic structures to silicon solar cells. We present simulations of the optical properties of plasmonic structures together with results on the production and characterization of silver nanoparticles on Si solar cells