Elena Ionica

University of Bucharest | Unibuc · Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Antimicrobial and anticancer drug resistance represent two of the main global challenges for the public health, requiring immediate practical solutions. In line with this, we need a better understanding of the origins of drug resistance in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and the evolutionary processes leading to the occurrence of adaptive phenotyp...

In order to ensure that primary endpoints of clinical studies are attained, the patients’ stratification is an important aspect. Selection criteria include age, gender, and also specific biomarkers, such as inflammation scores. These criteria are not sufficient to achieve a straightforward selection, however, in case of multifactorial diseases, wit...

Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy are X-linked recessive inherited disorders characterized by progressive weakness due to skeletal muscle degeneration. Different mutations in the DMD gene, which encodes for dystrophin protein, are responsible for these disorders. The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship between type, size, and...

Titanium alloys are widely used for biomedical applications due to their good biocompatibility. Nevertheless, they cannot be used for balloon expandable stents due to a lack of ductility compared to cobalt-chromium (Co-Cr) alloys and stainless steels. In this study, a new highly deformable Ti-16Nb-8Mo alloy was designed for such an application. How...

Geography is one of the key drivers of the significant variation in the etiopathogenic profile and prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity, therefore geographically based data are fundamental for implementing the appropriate interventions. Presently, the selection criteria of T2DM and obesity patients for laparoscopic sleeve gastr...

Muscular dystrophies are a diverse group of inherited muscle disorders with a wide range of clinical manifestations from a severe form with early onset and early death to adult forms with later onset and minimal clinical manifestation that do not affect life-span. Overlapping clinical symptoms and the multitude of genes that need to be analyzed for...

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is a mesenchymal tumor, caused by Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) with molecular and cytogenetic changes poorly understood. To gain further insight on the underlying molecular changes in KS, we performed microRNA (miRNA) microarray analysis of 17 Kaposi's sarcoma specimens. Three normal skin specimens were used as controls. The mos...

In order to improve the “personalized” therapeutic strategy in CRC, by our study we have comparatively evaluated the protein and gene expression for several key point biomarkers (APC, PLA2G2A, CDH1, BRCA1, and EGFR). Our in vivo experiment involved diagnosis testing of CRC patients and molecular biology testing on biological samples in order to cla...

Wilson's disease (WD) is a rare autosomal recessive disease. More than 500 mutations have been described so far, out of which 29 in exon 14. H1069Q mutation in the exon 14 of ATP7B gene is the most frequently encountered in Europe. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the incidence of mutations occurring in exon 14 of ATP7B gene in Romanian...

The concept of "consortialization" refers to a type of effective cooperation and regional institutionalization that has beneficial effects on all the activities of an “economic and development region”, as the Bucharest-Ilfov Region is in Romania. The most important consequence of such a process of working into a Regional Consortium is related to th...

Genetic alterations associated with the development of breast cancer (BC) are often observed. Mutations may appear not only inside the gene, but at the microsatellite loci level, also. The aim of this study was to detect genes mutations at the microsatellite loci in solid tumors from patients with breast cancer. Loss of heterozygosity at BRCA1 loci...

Cancer can occur in various areas of the digestive system. Diagnosis is by endoscopy with biopsy (EDS-for esophagus and stomach, colonoscopy for colon and rectum) and by surgery (resection of stomach, colon and rectum) with exam HP extemporaneous of the tumoral segments, followed sometimes by CT, RMN, endoscopic ultrasound (esophagus) for staging....

Large mutations in the APC (adenomatous polyposis coli) gene have been detected especially on familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP). The mutations may appear not only inside the gene, but also at the microsatellite loci level. Therefore, we have developed two independent methods for the detection of mutations encompassing one or more exons, on patie...

The muscular dystrophies are a diverse group of inherited muscle disorders characterized by progressive muscle weakness and wasting with characteristic histological abnormalities such as degeneration, necrosis, and regeneration of muscle fibres. Many muscle-wasting diseases are caused by defect in genes for muscle proteins. Most of these proteins a...

Introduction: In the oral cavity, indigenous bacteria are often associated with the aetiology of two major oral diseases, which are endemic in industrialised societies and are increasing in developing countries, i.e. caries and periodontal diseases. Periodontitis involves the destruction of the connective tissue attachment and the adjacent alveolar...

Muscular dystrophies are a heterogeneous group of genetically determined disorders characterized by progressive muscle weakness and wasting with variable distribution and severity. The mode of inheritance, the age of onset, the involvement of particular skeletal muscle types, as well as variable serum concentration and the overall progression have...

Cutaneous melanomas has become one of the most discussed and studied tumor because its particular immunologic development but also its increasing rate worldwide in the last decades. Even thought many patients are diagnosed at an early stage, the death rate continues to rise due to the increasing incidence of more advanced lesions. The aim of this s...

The phylogenetic relationships among Romanian cyprinids were inferred using the complete nucleotide sequence of the cytochrome b gene (cit b) and a fragment from subunit 2 of cytochrome oxidase gene (cox 2). The phylogenetic utility of mitochondrial genes has been studied at different taxonomic levels among fish taxa. We sequenced nine cyprinids s...

Prolonged exposure to cadmium is known to have diverse toxic effects on cells of different organs. We have investigated the effects following administration of CdCl2 5 µM and 20 μM in Huh 7 cells. The results of this study revealed an increase in activities of the critical scavenging free radicals enzymes, catalase and glutathione peroxidase, indic...

Colorectal cancer is one of the most frequent causes of cancer deaths in the world. The characteristic keys of the colorectal cancer are AI/LOH and MSI. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relevance of LOH and MSI at the APC and PLA2G2A genes in blood and tumors from patients with colorectal cancer. APC is the first tumoral suppressor...

Micromachining and micro patterning of biocompatible substrates encourage the arrangement of cells in vitro following the same morphofunctional patterns as in vivo. Adherence, multiplication and differentiation in vitro of the dermal fibroblasts on surface and bulk micro fabricated substrates represent a modern method for biocompatibility testing i...

Recently, breeders have turned to molecular biology and they are using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) applied to the detection of short sequence repeats (microsatellites). Microsatellite markers are evenly distributed across genome and can be identified within DNA samples using PCR. In our experiment we analyzed 34/200 English Thoroughbred horses...

The paper presents investigations in the use of biochemical blood markers for paternity assessment. The genetic structures from loci Tf, Pa, Es, Gc and Al in a population of English Thoroughbred horses were identified by electrophoresis using polyacrylamide as migration substrate. The study of biochemical markers in horses provides important tools...

In this paper we described the production of PLA2 type IIA into the culture medium of Sf21 insect cells, by using the baculovirus expression system compared to CHO expression system. During the procedure, the necessity for multiplicity of infection (M.O.I.) optimization appeared. When the Sf21 cells were infected with M.O.I. 0.1, the enzyme levels...

This study aims to investigate the effects of the insecticide lindane on liver, kidney and gill antioxidant enzyme activities in Carassius auratus gibelio. Fish were exposed to 0.05 mg/l for 96h. Activities of catalase (EC 1.11.1.6) and glucose- 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.49) were increased by the pesticide exposures. Glutathione reductase...