Although photodynamic therapy (PDT), a therapeutic approach that involves a photosensitizer, light and O2, has been principally considered for the treatment of specific types of cancers, other applications exist, including the treatment of infections. Unfortunately, PDT does not always guarantee full success since it exerts lethal effects only in cells that have taken up a sufficient amount of photosensitizer and have been exposed to adequate light doses, conditions that are not always achieved. Based on our previous experience on the combination PDT/chemotherapy, we have explored the possibility of fighting bacteria that commonly crowd infected surfaces by combining PDT with an antibiotic, which normally does not harm the strain at low concentrations. To this purpose, we employed 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA), a pro-drug that, once absorbed by proliferating bacteria, is converted into the natural photosensitizer Protoporphyrin IX (PpIX), followed by Gentamicin. Photoactivation generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) which damage or kill the cell, while Gentamicin, even at low doses, ends the work. Our experiments, in combination, have been highly successful against biofilms produced by several Gram positive bacteria (i.e., Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, etc.). This original approach points to potentially new and wide applications in the therapy of infections of superficial wounds and sores.

2b. Laryngoscope, 128:E339-E345, 2018.

High-Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma (HGSC) is the most incidental and lethal subtype of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) with a high mortality rate of nearly 65%. Recent findings aimed at understanding the pathogenesis of HGSC have attributed its principal source as the Fallopian Tube (FT). To further comprehend the exact mechanism of carcinogenesis, which is still less known, we performed a transcriptome analysis comparing FT and HGSC. Our study aims at exploring new players involved in the development of HGSC from FT, along with their signaling network, and we chose to focus on non-coding RNAs. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are increasingly observed to be the major regulators of several cellular processes and could have key functions as biological markers, as well as even a therapeutic approach. The most physiologically relevant and significantly dysregulated non-coding RNAs were identified bioinformatically. After analyzing the trend in HGSC and other cancers, MAGI2-AS3 was observed to be an important player in EOC. We assessed its tumor-suppressive role in EOC by means of various assays. Further, we mapped its signaling pathway using its role as a miRNA sponge to predict the miRNAs binding to MAGI2AS3 and showed it experimentally. We conclude that MAGI2-AS3 acts as a tumor suppressor in EOC, specifically in HGSC by sponging miR-15-5p, miR-374a-5p and miR-374b-5p, and altering downstream signaling of certain mRNAs through a ceRNA network.