Technologies

Aptamers, short structured single-stranded oligonucleotides binding at high affinity to a given target protein, are selected from large combinatorial libraries through repeated cycles of incubation of the library with the target, recovery and amplification of target-bound oligonucleotides (SELEX technology, Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment). SELEX can be applied to select aptamers against a known target protein or against a specific cell phenotype, without any prior knowledge of the specific target, leading to new biomarkers discovery.

The dramatic global health emergency due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic requires new diagnostic devices capable of identifying the presence of virus particles in patient biological samples. In this direction, the development of an innovative low-cost test, which provides the result within a few minutes, which is reproducible and which can reveal the direct presence of even a few viral particles, would be of fundamental importance for the monitoring and containment of the pandemic.

In our recent publication we identified a group of  bladder cancer-specific ncRNA, called T-UCRs that are the most up-regulated in bladder cancer patient samples compared with normal bladder urothelium.

The technology concerns planar optical antennas composed of thin metal films and dielectric materials for the efficient direction of the light emitted by light sources, such as fluorescent molecules and bio-markers. They consist of a reflector layer, adjacent to the substrate, and a director, semi-reflective, between which the emitter is positioned, integrated into a homogeneous dielectric layer.

TNBC affects around 170,000 patients worldwide each year and accounts for 15-20% of breast cancer; compared to other types of breast cancer, TNBC is more aggressive and precocious. Its diagnosis, made difficult by the existence of subtypes with different characteristics, is fundamental to establish prognosis and personalized therapy. Nucleic acid aptamers are highly selective low-molecular-weight molecules, synthesizable at low cost and easily modifiable, capable of binding and detecting tissue markers ("aptahistochemistry”). Our team has iden