HYBRID EVENT: You can participate in person at Rome, Italy or Virtually from your home or work.

3rd Edition of International Precision Medicine Conference

March 17-19, 2025

March 17 -19, 2025 | Rome, Italy
2022 Speakers

Stefania Di Mauro

Stefania Di Mauro, Speaker at Personalized Medicine Congress 2022
University of Catania, Italy
Title : Circulating Coding and Long Non-Coding RNAs as Potential Biomarkers of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Abstract:

Background: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic degenerative disease with a median survival
of 2-5 years after diagnosis. Therefore, IPF patient identification represents an important and challenging
clinical issue. Current research is still searching for novel reliable non-invasive biomarkers. Therefore, we
explored the potential use of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and mRNAs as biomarkers for IPF.

Methods: We first performed a whole transcriptome analysis using microarray (n = 14: 7 Control, 7 IPF),
followed by the validation of selected transcripts through qPCRs in an independent cohort of 95 subjects
(n = 95: 45 Control, 50 IPF). Diagnostic performance and transcript correlation with functional/clinical data
were also analyzed.

Results: 1059 differentially expressed transcripts were identified. We confirmed the downregulation of
FOXF1 adjacent non-coding developmental regulatory RNA (FENDRR) lncRNA, hsa_circ_0001924
circularRNA, utrophin (UTRN) and Y-box binding protein 3 (YBX3) mRNAs. The two analyzed non-coding
RNAs correlated with Forced Vital Capacity (FVC)% and Diffusing Capacity of the Lung for carbon monoxide
(DLCO)% functional data, while coding RNAs correlated with smock exposure. All analyzed transcripts showed excellent performance in IPF identification with Area Under the Curve values above 0.87; the most outstanding one was YBX3: AUROC 0.944, CI 95% = 0.895-0.992, sensitivity = 90%, specificity = 88.9%, p-value = 1.02 × 10-13.

Conclusions: This study has identified specific transcript signatures in IPF suggesting that validated transcripts and microarray data could be useful for the potential future identification of RNA molecules as non-invasive biomarkers for IPF.

Biography:

Dr. Stefania Di Mauro studied molecular and cellular biology at the University of Catania, Italy and graduated in 2013. She then joined the research group of Francesco Purrello at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine. She received her PhD degree in translational medicine in 2017 at the same institution. As a postdoctoral fellowship (from 2018 to date) she has been working on several projects mainly focused on the identification of non-coding RNAs as circulating noninvasive biomarkers or intracellular novel molecular targets of several kinds of diseases.

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