Technologies

4Ts Game was born in ITD in 2017 to indicate a board game for teacher training, which aims to develop skills in designing collaborative learning activities. The game was originally conceived as a 'tangible' game, consisting of a board and 4 decks of paper cards which contain inputs that guide the teachers/players' design process. Subsequently the game evolved and was developed in its digital version. In this version, developed in Unity and with an underlying knowledge base in Prolog, the game is able to provide feedback to teachers regarding the design/game choices made.

The assessment of bio-humoral markers beyond clinical evaluation would allow a more comprehensive pheno/endotyping of patients affected by chronic inflammatory diseases. Therapy personalization would require a profile of the mediators that are relevant in the disease pathogenesis and that well correlate with prognosis. Currently, the measurement of multiple biomarkers is not included in patient evaluation because it has high costs,  requires centralized laboratories, experienced personnel and bulky equipment and is time-consuming.

The insertion of executable programs within QR codes is a new enabling technology for many application contexts in everyday life. Every time Internet access is unavailable, QR code usage is limited to reading the data it contains without any possibility of interaction.

The proposed technology takes advantages of the huge potentialities of the gellan gum microgels in the preservation of cultural heritage. Microgels are polymeric gels particles with the micro and nanoscale size, whose soft nature is due to the presence of the aqueous solvent inside the particle. For their small size, they can easily diffuse in the environment and penetrate in the porous structure of paper and wood to act as cleaner agent.

Our idea come from the improving of the traceability technique in agro-food fisheries industries through the application of omics technologies in microbiota studies.  These latter would be capable of exploiting the huge pool of biological molecules contained in fishery resources (e.g. nucleic acids, proteins, metabolites) and use them as a powerful tools for the identification and reconstruction of fishery history, from the sea to the table.

The technology based on cell or tissue cultures is very useful for the production of bioactive compounds. These molecules, depending on the class they belong to, can be used in the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. In particular, the developed technology is addressed to the optimization of bioactive compounds in plant cell/tissue cultures having the biosynthetic pathway of the compound of interest.

Integrative omics has posed new challenges in modern precision medicine, particularly in oncology, including i) the identification of new tumor markers for early, precise, and non-invasive diagnostics, and ii) the discovery of innovative molecular targets for therapeutic applications. Our studies on medulloblastoma, a highly malignant childhood tumor, have contributed to identifying RNA molecules that meet these criteria.

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 aim of the research group is the creation of 3D models (microorgan/ organoids) constructed using samples obtained from patients, both biopsy samples and samples collected with non-invasive techniques (exhaled breath condensate, induced sputum, blood samples).

An innovative approach for the treatment of diabetic and venous ulcers, characterized by a difficult healing process and therefore at potential risk of infection and therefore of hospitalization and amputation of the limb, is represented by the local administration of "bioactive" factors through the use of synthetic and/or biological matrices that allow a gradual and controlled release in order to obtain a better and faster healing.

The object of the technology is the development of a transferable methodology from the laboratory scale to the pilot scale to be validated in the industrial setting for the treatment of basic waste of natural polymers of agro-food or manufacturing industry.

We have identified the presence of the poorly characterized precursor proNGF-A in human tissues, deposited its coding nucleotide sequence (GenBank MH358394) and demonstrated its neuroprotective and neurotrophic activity in vitro and in vivo. We inserted mutations into the native molecule, identified through computational analysis, which allow proNGF-A production by eukaryotic expression systems, through a method currently validated on a laboratory scale.

Design and testing of neoproteins with optimized nutritional value, according to needs, avoiding their degradation - thus maintaining a high production yield - and aggregation (which could make them indigestible). Neoproteins are produced and characterized in plant systems as bioreactors. We have already created zeolin, formed by the fusion of a bean seed protein with a portion of a maize seed protein.

The proposed technology is based on the concept of Power-Over-Fibre (PoF), which involves the transmission of data and power over an optical fiber. This technology is suitable for applications where traditional copper cabling is impractical or undesirable. This is the case with pantographs, where there is a large potential difference between the catenary and the earth, and therefore any electrical contact must be avoided for safety reasons. Furthermore, pantographs operate in an environment with very high electromagnetic interference (EMI).

The metasurface optomechanical modulator is a device designed to modulate the amplitude, phase and polarization of a beam of electromagnetic radiation, independently, or simultaneously, according to prescribed paths in the parameter space (for example, as regards polarization, paths on the Poincaré sphere). The concept of our device can be applied to the entire spectrum of electromagnetic waves: from radio frequency, to microwaves (GHz), to millimeter waves (THz), to far and near infrared radiation, and to visible light.