Head: Dr. Mauro Picardo, MD
STAFF

Mission

To study the mechanisms and the sites of production of the radicals species in physiologic and pathologic conditions (cuts/ulcers, chronic inflammatory, iper proliferative skin diseases, as well as those due to altered differentiation and pigmentation processes, and systemic metabolic pathologies with skin involvement). Particularly in Atopic Dermatitis, Seborrheic Dermatitis, Vitiligo.

• To study the functional and phenotypic properties of inflammatory cells (lymphocytes and dendritic cells) and their role in cutaneous physiopathology processes.
• To study the transcriptome and the genome in skin cells in physiologic conditions and during chronic inflammatory, autoimmune, iper proliferative and de-differentiation processes and hereditary rare skin diseases.
• To study the biologic value, the functional properties, and the genome in dermal, adipose tissue and hair follicle stem reservoir. To set up new therapeutic strategies for cellular and cellular-free regenerative medicine approaches.
• To conduct both chemometric (untargeted detection, based on statistical methods of prediction) and quantitative (targeted detection, based on univocal identification and quantification of determined metabolites compared to a known standard) metabolomics’ analysis.
• To study the Lipidomic skin profile throughout the HPLC/MS/TOF technology.

Research Activity

The Laboratory proposes and develops research projects about biological and molecular mechanisms involved in cutaneous response at toxic external agents, in inflammatory and iper-proliferative cutaneous diseases, in cellular skin cross talk and in pigmentation, to identify new therapeutic and preventive approaches. Lab activity is also developed in preclinical pharmacology field. Since 2006, with the building of the Integrated Center of Metabolomics Research, the Lab introduced an “omics” sciences approach to characterize small molecules, relevant in the skin biological system.

To develop and improve the analysis in phisiopathologic processes using all the branches of the omics sciences. It is composed by: 

• cellular biology for the isolation and in vitro culture of skin  primary normal and pathologic cell lines, Tlines and clones, dendritic cells from peripheral  blood, and dermal and  adipose subcutaneous tissue stem cells;
• analysis of biochemical and functional parameters in lymphocytes, red blood cells and plasma isolated from hematic blood samples in patients suffering dermatological diseases and healthy reference subjects;
• preparation and analysis of cellular and tissue samples for immunofluorescence, confocal microscopy, immunocytochemistry;
• immunohistochemical analysis of biopsy samples from peri-lesional healthy skin and from inflammatory or neoplastic lesions and image analysis;
• flow cytometric analysis for the identification of radical species, of phenotype functional membrane and intracellular, mitochondrial function markers, and for the characterization of intracellular signaling and apoptosis;
• DNA, RNA and protein products analysis from biological samples of different nature (in vivo, ex vivo, in vitro);
• lipidomic analysis for the study of amino acids and lipids in various biological substrates such as skin, plasma, serum, mouse models, cell cultures;
• bioinformatic analysis of data obtained from analyzes carried out using metabolomic or cellular and molecular biology approaches;
• identification of sensitive markers and metabolic pathways altered by pharmacological treatments (molecules with known or newly conceived activity) and involved in the physiopathology of metabolic and systemic diseases with dermatological involvement.

PI Emanuela Camera, PharmaD 

The major areas of investigations are 1) the constitutive composition and the oxidative modifications of skin surface lipids produced in the sebaceous gland and in the epidermal permeability barrier in humans and mice; 2) the study of mechanisms of cellular responses to lipotoxic and inflammatory insults with focus on lipid-processing pathways, lipid oxidation, constitutive antioxidant responses (i.e. GSH/GSSG balance). The group contributing with the experimental design, management of high-end equipment, development of innovative analytical methods based on the use of GCMS and LCMS combined with chemometric tools.