Publications

International Journal of Biological Macromolecules
Chitosan, a cationic polysaccharide known for its peculiar properties, plays a key role in enhancing biological interactions at mucosal surfaces. This study investigated the role and impact of chitosan on physicochemical and biological properties of Cyclosporine A -loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN). Three types of SLN were developed: SLN devoid of chitosan, chitosan-associated SLN during hot homogenization (CH-SLN), and chitosan-coated SLN (CH-c-SLN). Physicochemical characterization revealed differences in particle shape, with chitosan presence increasing particle size and zeta potential. SAXS/WAXS and DSC studies demonstrated that Cyclosporine A and chitosan influenced lipid organization and thermal behavior. Moreover, mucoadhesion and mucin interaction were stronger in chitosan-associated SLN (CH-SLN), as evidenced by SAXS and ITC, due to chitosan cationic nature. At last, preclinical studies revealed enhanced cellular uptake in presence of chitosan. These findings demonstrated that chitosan-associated SLN enhanced mucoadhesion and cellular interaction while maintaining structural integrity, providing a promising platform for drug delivery.

International Wound Journal
Chronic wounds present a significant challenge to society and have a negative impact on the quality of life and daily activities of patients. This review aimed to identify the cost-effectiveness of the currently used care alternatives for the treatment of chronic wounds. This study serves to identify cost-effectiveness boundaries and provide a basis for determining the cost-effectiveness of the proposed care alternatives. A systematic literature search was conducted in compliance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Articles published on Web of Science and PubMed from June 2013 to June 2023 were included. A comparative analysis was performed using the data adjusted for inflation and transformed for the same time horizon. The median time to heal was approximately 2.5 months in the first quartile of studies ending at 1.3 months and the third quartile ending at 3.7 months. The average cost of complete chronic wound healing for all care alternatives in the study sample was $6435, with a median cost of $5814.

Results in Engineering
Chronic skin wounds affect millions globally, causing significant patient morbidity and posing a major healthcare challenge. Conventional treatments, such as gauze dressings, wound debridement, and pressure off-loading, often fail to accelerate healing or reduce inflammation, resulting in low healing rates and frequent wound recurrence. Emerging studies evidenced the critical role of endogenous electric fields generated by transepithelial potentials in regulating cell migration and wound repair. The use of exogenous electrical stimuli aims to mimic these bioelectric cues, promoting fibroblast alignment, collagen deposition, angiogenesis, and re-epithelialization, thus promoting wound healing. Given these premises, this study focuses on the design and the development of electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds based on polycaprolactone and collagen, doped with conductive graphene nanosheets, to support electrical current flow and enhance wound healing. High conductive and biocompatible graphene has been selected since it facilitates efficient electrical signal transmission and this should stimulate cellular responses, critical for tissue regeneration.

The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology

As extrusion-based bioprinting advances, notable challenges remain in printing parameter adjustment. Finding optimal values of key parameters such as speed, material volume and temperature requires extensive manual testing, consuming substantial material, resources and time. Moreover, manual experimentation does not always guarantee high-quality results. Although progress has been made in evaluating print quality, quantitative approaches have not yet yielded significant results. Current calibration methods focus on a specific material and geometry, making them invalid for other types of geometries or materials. To address this limitation, this study proposes a comprehensive multi-feature calibration framework designed to generate high-density, measurable data to be applicable to several hydrogel systems, pending material-specific validation, across a large spectrum of printable geometric features. The presented approach proposes a scalable pattern with basic, exhaustive geometric primitives, enabling deeper insight into the behavior of complex structures. Furthermore, redundant geometries in the pattern address repeatability problems caused by flow inconsistencies. This design allows the evaluation of key features of interest—such as line continuity, width, circularity, density —across different geometries. Additionally, this study proposes quantitative metrics for an objective selection of favourable parameter ranges tailored to specific features of interest. To evaluate the pattern, printing experiments have been conducted to illustrate how the resulting multi-feature data can be used to identify configurations that enhance structural quality. By integrating these metrics into data-driven computational approaches, this framework could significantly reduce experimentation time and resources, improve print quality, and increase reproducibility, thereby contributing to more efficient and precise solutions in the field of extrusion-based 3D bioprinting.

Biomedical Materials

Recent advances in drug development and tissue engineering have emphasized the need for precise 3D-printed multilayered blood vessel biomodels. Although existing extrusion-based models integrate biomaterials and cells, they often lack geometric fidelity, limiting their practical use in tissue engineering. This study addresses a key constraint in the generation of multi-material cylindrical constructs by developing a new printing protocol to enhance trajectory generation for extrusion-based multi-material nested cylindrical model bioprinting process. To overcome this challenge, we have developed a computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing software capable of generating multi-material nested cylindrical models and their printing trajectory using an innovative printing protocol. The protocol strategically modifies the starting point of each layer and avoids collisions during fabrication. Furthermore, it optimizes the printing order to minimize tool changes and enables flexible adjustment of photopolymerization timing and pathing. We have tested this approach on three multi-material tissue models and compared the results with the models generated using the BIOCAD software (RegenHU). Findings demonstrate that our protocol significantly improves cylindrical structure integrity, minimizes printing collisions and reduces overall printing time. Comparative analysis confirms the superior printing fidelity of the tissue models printed using our method, validating its effectiveness for extrusion-based cylindrical bioprinting applications. This optimized trajectory-generation approach provides a robust framework for creating physiologically accurate in vitro vascular models, potentially accelerating drug discovery and reducing the reliance on animal experimentation in biomedical research.

International Journal of Pharmaceutics: X
In the pharmaceutic field, materials with enhanced bioadhesive properties have been widely employed to produce scaffolds with deep interaction and adhesion to the biological surfaces, preventing them from dislocation and promoting cell homing, proliferation and growth. Parallelly, mucoadhesion has been extensively used to increase formulation retention onto the mucosal surface. This review aims to describe the most appropriate and relevant techniques to evaluate scaffolds bioadhesion and mucoadhesion for biomedical application, and more in details, in wound healing treatment. Different methods will be reviewed and described in order to provide an overview of the traditional approaches and the most innovative and recent tools. In addition, critical considerations on the variety of biological substrates that could be used will be reported to underline the different alternatives for testing bioadhesion, including ex-vivo and artificial options. Biomaterials, with a particular focus on bioadhesives, will be presented, as well as the mechanisms that govern bioadhesion and mucoadhesion.