Jesus Ruiz-Cabello

CIC biomaGUNE · Molecular and Functional Biomarkers

Background Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a severe disease characterized by elevated blood pressure in the pulmonary artery that can ultimately damage the right ventricle of the heart. PAH is pathophysiologically heterogeneous, which makes early diagnosis and treatment difficult. Inflammation is thought to be an important factor in the de...

Myocardial cardiopathy is one of the highest disease burdens worldwide. The damaged myocardium has little intrinsic repair ability, and as a result, the distorted muscle loses strength for contraction, producing arrhythmias and fainting, and entails a high risk of sudden death. Permanent implantable conductive hydrogels that can restore contraction...

The quest for nanomaterial-based imaging probes that can provide positive contrast in MRI is fueled by the necessity of developing novel diagnostic applications with potential for clinical translation that current gold standard probes cannot provide. Although interest in nanomaterials for positive contrast has increased in recent years, their study...

Atherosclerosis, a leading cause of cardiovascular diseases requires approaches to enhance disease monitoring and treatment. Nanoparticles offer promising potential in this area by being customisable to target components or molecular...

Many proteins linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and fronto-temporal dementia (ALS-FTD) change their cellular location and coalesce in cytoplasmic inclusion bodies in the disease state; yet the factors that govern protein relocation and organization remain unclear. Here, we show that inhibition of glycolysis and mitochondrial protein synthesis...

Background: global deletion of Vhl leads to vascular defects and early lethality, precluding the study of VHL/HIF signaling during coronary formation and homeostasis. Hypoxia pathway has been associated with cardiovascular diseases involving inflammation and vascular remodeling like atherosclerosis, but its role in Kawasaki Disease (KD) remains unk...

The quest for nanomaterial-based imaging probes that can provide positive contrast in MRI is fueled by the necessity of developing novel diagnostic applications with potential for clinical translation that current gold standard probes cannot provide. Although interest in nanomaterials for positive contrast has increased in recent years, their study...

Atherosclerosis, a leading cause of cardiovascular diseases requires approaches to enhance disease monitoring and treatment. Nanoparticles offer promising potential in this area by being customisable to target components or molecular processes within plaques, while carrying diagnostic and therapeutic agents. However, the number of biomarkers availa...

The quest for nanomaterial-based imaging probes that can provide positive contrast in MRI is fueled by the necessity of developing novel diagnostic applications with potential for clinical translation that current gold standard probes cannot provide. Although interest in nanomaterials for positive contrast has increased in recent years, their study...

Atherosclerosis is a complex disease that can lead to life-threatening events, such as myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke. Despite the severity of this disease, diagnosing plaque vulnerability remains challenging due to the lack of effective diagnostic tools. Conventional diagnostic protocols lack specificity and fail to predict the type of...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1021535.].

Birth presents a metabolic challenge to cardiomyocytes as they reshape fuel preference from glucose to fatty acids for postnatal energy production1,2. This adaptation is triggered in part by post-partum environmental changes³, but the molecules orchestrating cardiomyocyte maturation remain unknown. Here we show that this transition is coordinated b...

Welcome to this Special Issue of the journal Pharmaceutics entitled “Biomimetic and Functional Nanomaterials for Molecular Imaging,” which focuses on the exciting advancements in molecular imaging facilitated by biomaterials and nanotechnology [...]

The development of functional blood vessels is today a fundamental pillar in the evaluation of new therapies and diagnostic agents. This article describes the manufacture and subsequent functionalization, by means of cell culture, of a microfluidic device with a circular section. Its purpose is to simulate a blood vessel in order to test new treatm...

During the response to different stress conditions, damaged cells react in multiple ways, including the release of a diverse cocktail of metabolites. Moreover, secretomes from dying cells can contribute to the effectiveness of anticancer therapies and can be exploited as predictive biomarkers. The nature of the stress and the resulting intracellula...

Background: Despite increasing evidence suggesting that pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a complex disease involving vasoconstriction, thrombosis, inflammation, metabolic dysregulation and vascular proliferation, all the drugs approved for PAH mainly act as vasodilating agents. Since excessive TGF-β signaling is believed to be a critical fa...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a valuable diagnostic tool that provides detailed information about the structure and function of tissues in the human body. In particular, measuring relaxation times, such as T1 and T2, can provide important insights into the composition and properties of different tissues. Accurate relaxation time mapping is th...

Carbon Dots (CDs) are luminescent quasi‐spherical nanoparticles, possessing water solubility, high biocompatibility, and tunable chemical and physical properties for a wide range of applications, including nanomedicine and theranostics. The evaluation of new purification criteria, useful to achieve more reliable CDs, free from the interference of a...

The development of imaging technologies allowing noninvasive observation through solid bodies has represented a breakthrough in medical diagnosis, facilitating the comprehension of biomolecular events underlying disease and the development of more efficient therapeutic approaches. Some of the traditional limitations of these techniques are nowadays...

Purpose: Clinical ventilation studies are primarily performed with computerized tomography (CT) and more often with single-photon emission Computerized tomography (SPECT) using radiolabelled aerosols, both presenting certain limitations. Here, we investigate the use of the radiofluorinated gas [18F]SF6 as a positron emission tomography (PET) venti...

2-Deoxy-D-glucose (2DG) has recently received emergency approval for the treatment of COVID-19 in India, after a successful clinical trial. SARS-CoV-2 infection of cultured cells is accompanied by elevated glycolysis and decreased mitochondrial function, whereas 2DG represses glycolysis and stimulates respiration, and restricts viral replication. W...

Manganese ferrite nanoparticles display interesting features in bioimaging and catalytic therapies. They have been recently used in theranostics as contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and as catalase‐mimicking nanozymes for hypoxia alleviation. These promising applications encourage the development of novel synthetic procedures to...

Background: In most eukaryotic cells, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is uniparentally transmitted and present in multiple copies derived from the clonal expansion of maternally inherited mtDNA. All copies are therefore near-identical, or homoplasmic. The presence of more than one mtDNA variant in the same cytoplasm can arise naturally or result from...

Background Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a type of respiratory failure characterized by lung inflammation and pulmonary edema. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with ARDS in the more severe cases. This study aimed to compare the specificity of the metabolic alterations induced by COVID-19 or Influenza A pneumonia (IA...

The coating composition of nanomedicines is one of the main features in determining the medicines' fate, clearance, and immunoresponse in the body. To highlight the coatings' impact in pulmonary administration, two micellar superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) were compared. These nanoparticles are similar in size and charge but have...

Even though enormous efforts and control strategies have been implemented, bovine tuberculosis (TB) remains a significant source of health and socioeconomic concern. The standard method used in TB eradication programs for in vivo detection is the tuberculin skin test. However, the specificity of the tuberculin skin test is affected by infection wit...

Vascular microcalcifications are associated with atherosclerosis plaque instability and, therefore, to increased mortality. Because of this key role, several imaging probes have been developed for their in vivo identification. Among them, [¹⁸F]FNa is the gold standard, showing a large uptake in the whole skeleton by positron emission tomography. He...

Ex vivo models for the noninvasive study of myelin-related diseases represent an essential tool to understand the mechanisms of diseases and develop therapies against them. Herein, we assessed the potential of multimodal imaging traceable myelin-targeting liposomes to quantify myelin in organotypic cultures. Methods: MRI testing was used to image m...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children, and early diagnosis and treatment are crucial to reduce long-term morbidity and mortality. In this study, we explore whether urine nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics could be used to identify differences in the metabolic response of children with different d...

Fluorinated nanoparticles have increasing applications, but they are still challenging to prepare, especially in the case of water-soluble fluorinated nanoparticles. Herein, a fluorine labeling strategy is presented that is based on the conjugation of custom-made small fluorinated building blocks, obtained by simple synthetic transformations, with...

Colchicine demonstrated clinical benefits in the treatment of stable coronary artery disease. Our aim was to evaluate the effects of colchicine on atherosclerotic plaque stabilization. Atherosclerosis was induced in the abdominal aorta of 20 rabbits with high-cholesterol diet and balloon endothelial denudation. Rabbits were randomized to receive ei...

HIF1-alpha expression defines metabolic compartments in the developing heart, promoting glycolytic program in the compact myocardium and mitochondrial enrichment in the trabeculae. Nonetheless, its role in cardiogenesis is debated. To asses the importance of HIF1-alpha during heart development and the influence of glycolysis in ventricular chamber...

The BlueNative page (BNGE) gel has been the reference technique for studying the electron transport chain organization since it was established 20 years ago. Although the migration of supercomplexes has been demonstrated being real, there are still several concerns about its ability to reveal genuine interactions between respiratory complexes. More...

The positive contrast of extremely small iron oxide nanoparticles (ESIONP) in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) rejuvenates this class of metal nanoparticles (NP).Yet, the current synthesis often lacks the possibility of adjusting the core size (while it is a key element for ESIONP-based MRI contrast behaviour), and also involved multiple complex st...

Despite efforts to improve tuberculosis (TB) detection, limitations in access, quality and timeliness of diagnostic services in low- and middle-income countries are challenging for current TB diagnostics. This study aimed to identify and characterise a metabolic profile of TB in urine by high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry and...

p>Ultrasmall manganese ferrite nanoparticles display interesting features in bioimaging and Fenton nanocatalysis. However, little is known about how to optimize these nanoparticles to achieve simultaneously the highest efficiency in both types of applications. Herein, we present a cost-efficient synthetic microwave method that enables manganese fer...

Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) is a cardiovascular disease where the pulmonary arterial pressure and resistance increases, causing functional and morphological changes in structures like the Pulmonary Artery (PA). Magnetic Resonance (MR) is a noninvasive image modality whose importance is raising as it allows a complete functional evaluation of the af...

Background Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease and colchicine demonstrated clinical benefits in the treatment of stable coronary artery disease. Purpose Our aim was to assess the anti-inflammatory effects of colchicine on atherosclerotic vascular disease. Methods Atherosclerosis was induced in the abdominal aorta of 20 rabbits with...

Vascular microcalcifications are associated with atherosclerosis plaque instability and, therefore, to increased mortality. Because of this key role, several imaging probes have been developed for their in vivo identification. Among them [ ¹⁸ F]FNa is the gold standard, showing a large uptake in the whole skeleton. Here, we push the field towards t...

Radioisotope-labelled nanoparticles permit novel applications in molecular imaging, while recent developments in imaging have enabled direct visualization of biological processes. While this holds true for pathological processes that are stable in time, such as cancer, imaging approaches are limited for phenomena that take place in the range of min...

All metazoans depend on the consumption of O2 by the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation system (OXPHOS) to produce energy. In addition, the OXPHOS uses O2 to produce reactive oxygen species that can drive cell adaptations1–4, a phenomenon that occurs in hypoxia4–8 and whose precise mechanism remains unknown. Ca2+ is the best known ion that act...

Many probiotics that affect gut microbial ecology have been shown to produce beneficial effects on renin‐angiotensin‐dependent rodent models and human hypertension. We hypothesized that Bifidobacterium breve CECT7263 (BFM) would attenuate hypertension in deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA)‐salt rats, a renin‐independent model of hypertension. Rats w...

All metazoans depend on the consumption of O2 by the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation system (OXPHOS) to produce energy. In addition, the OXPHOS uses O2 to produce reactive oxygen species that can drive cell adaptations1-4, a phenomenon that occurs in hypoxia4-8 and whose precise mechanism remains unknown. Ca2+ is the best known ion that act...

Heteroplasmy, multiple variants of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in the same cytoplasm, may be naturally generated by mutations but is counteracted by a genetic mtDNA bottleneck during oocyte development. Engineered heteroplasmic mice with nonpathological mtDNA variants reveal a nonrandom tissue-specific mtDNA segregation pattern, with few tissues that...

In this review, the potential future role of microRNA-based therapies and their specific application in lung diseases is reported with special attention to pulmonary hypertension. Current limitations of these therapies will be pointed out in order to address the challenges that they need to face to reach clinical applications. In this context, the...

Aims: Human influenza A virus (hIAV) infection is associated with important cardiovascular complications, although cardiac infection pathophysiology is poorly understood. We aimed to study the ability of hIAV of different pathogenicity to infect the mouse heart, and establish the relationship between the infective capacity and the associated in vi...

Balloon catheter endothelial denudation in New Zealand white rabbits fed high cholesterol diet is a validated atherosclerosis model. Well-characterized in terms of atherosclerosis induction and progression, the metabolic changes associated with the atherosclerosis progression remain indeterminate. Non-targeted metabolomics permits to develop such e...

Iron oxide nanoparticles have been extensively utilised as negative (T2) contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging. In the past few years, researchers have also exploited their application as positive (T1) contrast agents to overcome the limitation of traditional Gd3+ contrast agents. To provide T1 contrast, these particles must present certain...

The antimicrobial functions of neutrophils are facilitated by a defensive armamentarium of proteins stored in granules, and by the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). However, the toxic nature of these structures poses a threat to highly vascularized tissues, such as the lungs. Here, we identified a cell-intrinsic program that modif...

Scope: The objective of this study was to determine the cardiovascular effects of the probiotics Bifidobacterium breve CECT7263 (BFM) and Lactobacillus fermentum CECT5716 (LC40), and the short chain fatty acids butyrate and acetate in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Methods and results: Ten five-weeks old Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY) and fifty...

Polymers, either as individual or mixed species or in hybrid structures, are widely used in drug delivery applications. This is justified by their wide and rich chemistry, which allows, among other features, functionalization, conjugation with molecules of biomedical interest, self-assembly, versatility, and the design of stimuli-responsive nanostr...

Aging is the major risk factor for many metabolic chronic diseases. Several metabolic pathways suffer a progressive impairment during aging including body composition and insulin resistance which are associated to autophagy dysfunction and increased inflammation. Many of these alterations are aggravated by non-healthy lifestyle such as obesity and...

While NLRP3-inflammasome has been implicated in cardiovascular diseases, its role in physiological cardiac aging is largely unknown. During aging, many alterations occur in the organism which are associated with progressive impairment of metabolic pathways related to insulin resistance, autophagy dysfunction and inflammation. Here, we investigated...

mtDNA is present in multiple copies in each cell derived from the expansions of those in the oocyte. Heteroplasmy, more than one mtDNA variant, may be generated by mutagenesis, paternal mtDNA leakage, and novel medical technologies aiming to prevent inheritance of mtDNA-linked diseases. Heteroplasmy phenotypic impact remains poorly understood. Mous...