CALUX bioassay: a cost-effective rapid screening technique for screening dioxins like compounds

Alteration of biomass toxicity in torrefaction - A XDS-CALUX bioassay study

Torrefaction constitutes one of the promising technologies for the management of waste biomass and the production of high-carbon products for combustion, gasification, adsorption of pollutants or soil treatment. Unfortunately, waste biomass may be contaminated with toxic persistent organic pollutants, such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) and dioxin-like biphenyls (dl-PCB). Literature does not provide consistent measurements on how the low-temperature thermochemical processing, such as torrefaction, affects the toxicity of biomass. This contribution assesses how a torrefaction treatment, conducted at 200 °C, modifies the toxicity due to PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB in biomass. We deploy the XDS-CALUX biotest on five types of waste biomass (sewage sludge, tree bark, cattle manure, spent coffee ground, common reed), before and after treatment. The content of total dioxin- & biphenyl fraction compounds in the raw biomass, investigated in this study, varies from 0.14 to 3.67 pg BEQ·g-1d.m., and in the torrefied biomass between 0.17 and 6.00 pg BEQ·g-1d.m.; BEQ stands for bioanalytical equivalent. This increase is statistically insignificant at p = 0.05, taking into account all types of examined biomass. This proves that low-temperature torrefaction cannot detoxify biomass, i.e., chars, produced from biomass characterized by elevated concentration of PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB, will reflect the contamination of the feedstocks. With respect to heavy metals, we conclude that only the content of Cd in biomass, and, to a lesser extent, the abundance of Cu and Fe, modify the toxicity of this material during its thermochemical treatment at low temperature.

Current advances in the use of bioluminescence assays for drug discovery: an update of the last ten years

INTRODUCTION

Bioluminescence is a well-established optical detection technique widely used in several bioanalytical applications, including high-throughput and high-content screenings. Thanks to advances in synthetic biology techniques and deep learning, a wide portfolio of luciferases is now available with tuned emission wavelengths, kinetics, and high stability. These luciferases can be implemented in the drug discovery and development pipeline, allowing high sensitivity and multiplexing capability.

AREAS COVERED

This review summarizes the latest advancements of bioluminescent systems as toolsets in drug discovery programs for in vitro applications. Particular attention is paid to the most advanced bioluminescence-based technologies for drug screening over the past 10 years (from 2013 to 2023) such as cell-free assays, cell-based assays based on genetically modified cells, bioluminescence resonance energy transfer, and protein complementation assays in 2D and 3D cell models.

EXPERT OPINION

The availability of tuned bioluminescent proteins with improved emission and stability properties is vital for the development of bioluminescence assays for drug discovery, spanning from reporter gene technology to protein-protein techniques. Further studies, combining machine learning with synthetic biology, will be necessary to obtain new tools for sustainable and highly predictive bioluminescent drug discovery platforms.

Exposure study on susceptible people - SPES: An integrative biomonitoring approach

BACKGROUND

The evaluation of environmental exposure risk requires a global analysis of pollution phenomena, including biological effects and potentially correlated clinical outcomes in susceptible populations. Although human biomonitoring plays a fundamental role in assessing the degree of contamination, it is not effective alone in identifying a direct link between exposure, biomolecular effects and outcomes on target organisms. While toxicogenomics and epidemiology are mainly focused on the investigation of molecular reactions and clinical outcomes, the monitoring of environmental matrices works independently to characterize the territorial distribution of toxic compounds, without proving any correlated health risk for residents.

OBJECTIVES

We propose a new biomonitoring model based on a whole systemic analytical evaluation of environmental context. The paradigm of the method consists of identifying the sources of pollution, the migration pathways of those pollutants and their effects on target organisms. By means of this innovative, holistic epidemiological approach, we included healthy human subjects in a cohort to identify potential risks of exposure and predict possible correlated clinical outcomes. 4205 residents of the Campania region were enrolled in the "SPES" biomonitoring study, which especially focused on the areas dubbed "Land of Fires" in the recent decades.

DISCUSSION

The analysis of environmental exposure risk suffers the lack of data integration from various science fields, and this comes down to a limited point of view and a limited knowledge of phenomena. In implementing our model, we first constructed an analytical picture of the Real-world situation. We next conducted a comparative risk assessment, in order to identify possible correlations between pollution and health within a holistic view.

CONCLUSION

This type of research activities aims to support the implementation of public health interventions and to become a reference model in the evaluation of the risk of exposure to environmental pollutants.