Uno studio coordinato dall’Irgb-Cnr ha dimostrato l’efficacia sperimentale di un nuovo approccio terapeutico per il trattamento di disturbi cardiovascolari, che mima il comportamento delle particelle inquinanti quando attaccano il sistema cardiocircolatorio. La ricerca, condotta nell’ambito del progetto europeo ‘Cupido’, è pubblicata su Science Translational Medicine

Ricercatori dell’Istituto di ricerca genetica e biomedica (Irgb) del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche di Milano in collaborazione con i colleghi dell’Istituto di scienza e tecnologia dei materiali ceramici (Istec) del Cnr di Faenza hanno messo a punto un approccio terapeutico innovativo e non invasivo per il trattamento dei disturbi cardiovascolari, ad oggi la prima causa di morte nel mondo. Il metodo, descritto su Science Translational Medicine, è basato sull’inalazione di nanoparticelle ‘caricate’ con farmaci capaci di arrivare rapidamente al cuore. La ricerca è stata condotta nell’ambito di ‘Cupido’, progetto europeo di cui il Cnr è coordinatore, che ha lo scopo di individuare nuove soluzioni terapeutiche basate sulle nanotecnologie in ambito cardiovascolare.

New research, published today in Nature Scientific Reports, not only implies a link between catastrophic volcanic eruptions and landslides, but also suggests that landslides are the trigger.  At the heart of Tenerife and standing almost 4 km high, Teide is one of the largest volcanoes on Earth. Over a period of several hundred thousand years, the previous incarnations of Teide have undergone a repeated cycle of very large eruptions, collapse, and regrowth. Previous research by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) revealed that past eruptions may have been linked to huge multi-stage submarine landslides, based on similar ages and composition of landslide and volcanic deposits.
By studying these landslide deposits further, NOC scientists noticed that material from explosive volcanic eruptions was only found in the uppermost layers of each landslide deposit. This demonstrates that the initial stages of each landslide occurred underwater and before each eruption, whilst in each case the later stages of terrestrial landsliding occurred after the eruption. These results suggest that the initial stages of the landslides may have triggered each of the eruptions. 

The human brain uses the signals that come from the senses to adjust its behavior: for example, we hurry to turn off the stove if we feel the smell of burned from the roast that we are baking. In people suffering from neurological or psychiatric illnesses such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, these mechanisms are compromised and the processing of incoming sensory signals is altered due to communication distortions in neuronal networks. A way to restore normal functioning was studied by researchers from the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council (Istc-Cnr), which have developed a new non-invasive and personalized electrical stimulation technique, called transcranial Individual neuroDynamics Stimulation (tIDS), which can modify the excitability of the target region, with greater efficacy than today's methods. The study, made with the contribution of the Medical Statistics Service of the Fatebenefratelli-Isle Tiberina Foundation, was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Around 400 million people world-wide suffer in some form or other from a grass pollen allergy (rhinitis) – with the usual symptoms such as a runny nose, cough and severe breathing problems. In collaboration with the Viennese firm Biomay AG, MedUni Vienna researchers at the Institute of Pathophysiology and Allergy Research have now shown in a Phase II-b study with 180 patients in 11 European centres, that four injections of the synthetically manufactured vaccine BM32 in the first year and a top-up in the second year of treatment relieve the sufferers' symptoms by at least 25%. Immunotherapy with BM32 is based on an innovative recombinant peptide-carrier technology, which requires far fewer injections and has fewer side-effects than other immunotherapies for allergy sufferers. This technology was developed at the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Allergy Research at MedUni Vienna, under the direction of Rudolf Valenta, in collaboration with Viennese partner company Biomay AG (CEO: Rainer Henning). This company specialises in discovering and developing innovative allergy therapeutics.

Extraction of a wood sample for the analysis of Black pine annual growth ring in the national park of Aigüestortes and Estany de Sant Maurici (image: Emilia Gutiérrez /J.Julio Camarero)

A new study shows the chemical register of climate change and global episodes such as volcanic eruptions in high-mountain centennial forests in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain).

In September 1730, a large eruption in the Timanfaya volcano (Canary Islands, Spain) completely changed the morphology of Lanzarote. Atmospheric changes that caused volcanic eruptions centuries ago, such as the one in Timanfaya or the Tambora volcano (Indonesia) –which hid the sunlight for months-, had an impact on high-mountain centennial forests in the Iberian Peninsula, as stated in an article published in the journal Science of the Total Environment in which the lecturer Emilia Gutiérrez, from the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona, has taken part. The chemical traces from the released gases into the atmosphere by these volcanic eruptions can be now identified in the oldest coniferous Pyrenean forests, according to the study. In particular, eruptions such the Timanfaya’s in Lanzarote ─one of the strongest in the country due its duration until 1736 and the amount of thrown material─ and Tambora’s ─one of the biggest volcanic episodes, which led to a “year without summer” in 1816─ released big amounts of iron that altered the chemical composition of the annual Pyrenean tree rings. According to this article, the study of the records of tree growth rings (dendrochronology) could help to see the frequency and intensity of the volcanic phenomena in modern times.