Biomedical subjects

Manlio Barbarisi

Publications and source records attributed to Manlio Barbarisi.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

Buprenorphine in long-term control of chronic pain in cancer patients.

The aim of this randomized open-label prospective study was to evaluate the analgesic activity of buprenorphine in a transdermal formulation for cancer chronic pain control versus sustained-release morphine, in all cases combined with oral tramadol. A transdermal system with 35 microg/h buprenorphine was applied to the first group of patients (BT); the second group received 60 mg/day of sustained-release morphine (MT). In both groups oral tramadol was administered to a maximum of 200 mg daily, in case of need. The administration of transdermal buprenorphine versus morphine resulted in significant differences in the physical pain (P = 0.01), mental health (P = 0.03) and vitality (P = 0.001). These data indicated that the BT group showed an improvement of pain and a positive effect on the quality life.

Administration, Cutaneous↗

PubMed2006

Surgery, radiotherapy and temozolomide in treating high-grade gliomas.

Temozolomide (TMZ) a recent, oral, second generation alkylating agent is a chemotherapeutic with demonstrated efficacy for the treatment of high-grade gliomas. The efficacy of TMZ has been demonstrated in both pre-clinical and phase I and II studies. The goal of this study is to determine the activity and safety of temozolomide in improving overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS) and health-related quality of life (HQL) in patient with malignant gliomas treated by surgery, radiotherapy and temozolomide. Twelve patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma (GBM), and anaplastic astrocytoma (AA) were studied. The mean follow-up period was 12 months. The overall response rate for all histological groups was 33% (4 patients), 6 patients (50%) showed a stabilization of disease. The median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) was respectively 8.35 and 14.1 months; time to progression was 36 week ranging from 20 to 46 In all patients, treatment with temozolomide was associated with improvement of performance status including the patient showing disease progression; Karnofski score improved in all patients by a minimum of 10, with a median of 20 at 6 months. No patient stopped the treatment due to side-effects, no major adverse events were recorded. In two cases of glioblastoma, we observed complete response and after three years, the quality of life is optimal. Surgery allows to establish a histopathological diagnosis, to improve signs and symptoms which are attributable to intracranial hypertension or tumour topography, and to reduce the number of target cells for adjunctive therapies. Radiotherapy improves survival and TMZ chemotherapy that is given after radiotherapy adds survival benefit for patients. Because of its favourable pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties and improved tolerability. Temozolomide appears to be an ideal, first-line, single-agent, with a safe profile and demonstrated HQL benefits in patients with high-grade gliomas.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Tagging genes with cassette-exchange sites.

In an effort to make transgenesis more flexible and reproducible, we developed a system based on novel 5' and 3' 'gene trap' vectors containing heterospecific Flp recognition target sites and the corresponding 'exchange' vectors allowing the insertion of any DNA sequence of interest into the trapped locus. Flp-recombinase-mediated cassette exchange was demonstrated to be highly efficient in our system, even in the absence of locus-specific selection. The feasibility of constructing a library of ES cell clones using our gene trap vectors was tested and a thousand insertion sites were characterized, following electroporation in ES cells, by RACE-PCR and sequencing. We validated the system in vivo for two trapped loci in transgenic mice and demonstrated that the reporter transgenes inserted into the trapped loci have an expression pattern identical to the endogenous genes. We believe that this system will facilitate in vivo studies of gene function and large-scale generation of mouse models of human diseases, caused by not only loss but also gain of function alleles.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

Smart materials as scaffolds for tissue engineering.

In this review, we focused our attention on the more important natural extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules (collagen and fibrin), employed as cellular scaffolds for tissue engineering and on a class of semi-synthetic materials made from the fusion of specific oligopeptide sequences, showing biological activities, with synthetic materials. In particular, these new "intelligent" scaffolds may contain oligopeptide cleaving sequences specific for matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), integrin binding domains, growth factors, anti-thrombin sequences, plasmin degradation sites, and morphogenetic proteins. The aim was to confer to these new "intelligent" semi-synthetic biomaterials, the advantages offered by both the synthetic materials (processability, mechanical strength) and by the natural materials (specific cell recognition, cellular invasion, and the ability to supply differentiation/proliferation signals). Due to their characteristics, these semi-synthetic biomaterials represent a new and versatile class of biomimetic hybrid materials that hold clinical promise in serving as implants to promote wound healing and tissue regeneration.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

A critical overview of ESEM applications in the biological field.

Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) is a powerful research tool, but since it requires high vacuum conditions, the wet materials and biological samples must undergo a complex preparation that limits the application of SEM on this kind of specimen and often causes the introduction of artifacts. The introduction of Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM), working in gaseous atmosphere, represented a new perspective in biological research. Despite the fact that many biological applications have demonstrated the convenience of ESEM, the full potentialities of this technology are still under investigation. In this review, the exploration of the recent literature data confronted with the first results obtained in our experimental work suggest that ESEM represents an important extension of conventional scanning microscopy.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

From cell-ECM interactions to tissue engineering.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) consists of a complex mixture of structural and functional macromolecules and serves an important role in tissue and organ morphogenesis and in the maintenance of cell and tissue structure and function. The great diversity observed in the morphology and composition of the ECM contributes enormously to the properties and function of each organ and tissue. The ECM is also important during growth, development, and wound repair: its own dynamic composition acts as a reservoir for soluble signaling molecules and mediates signals from other sources to migrating, proliferating, and differentiating cells. Approaches to tissue engineering center on the need to provide signals to cell populations to promote cell proliferation and differentiation. These "external signals" are generated from growth factors, cell-ECM, and cell-cell interactions, as well as from physical-chemical and mechanical stimuli. This review considers recent advances in knowledge about cell-ECM interactions. A description of the main ECM molecules and cellular receptors with particular care to integrins and their role in stimulation of specific types of signal transduction pathways is also explained. The general principles of biomaterial design for tissue engineering are considered, with same examples.

Animals↗