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With the regional law n. 26 of December 30, 2020, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region wanted to promote the establishment of the Regional Register of Sudden Cardiac Death, with the aim of favoring the study of all those deaths that occurred suddenly and unexpectedly under the age of 50 years in which it is not possible to trace the cause of death with certainty. Such dramatic events, difficult to quantify considering the complexity of data collection, are often accepted with resignation without any further investigation of the possible causes. The Regional Register of Sudden Cardiac Deaths of Friuli Venezia Giulia was born from this premise and from the awareness of the importance of going back with a rigorous scientific methodology and through a multidisciplinary approach, to the diagnosis of hereditary heart diseases which, when determined, allow the enrollment of relatives in a cardiological screening process and, therefore, primary prevention of potentially fatal events. The authors describe the operating procedures feeding the Regional Register and present the results of the first year of activity on 26 cases.

2009/2010 To reach new and relevant insights in biomolecular sciences, new tools for fine and precise measurement are needed. Nowadays advances in the field of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) offer unique opportunities in the design of ultrasensitive analytical devices to support the molecular sensing investigations. Among them Microcantilever (MC) biosensors are label-free platforms that combine a biologically sensitive with a physical transducer in order to selectively and quantitatively detect the presence of specific compounds in a given external environment. Since they can be operated either as nanomechanical resonator or as surface stress sensor, MCs - activated with DNA probes or antibodies for molecular recognition - enable the measurement of mass with extraordinary sensitivity. In particular, the development of mass detector biosensor based on MC systems would permit to shift from qualitative data to quantitative measurements of key molecules involved in physiological processes. This can lead crucial informations to characterize complex mechanisms such as angiogenesis and tumor progression and to the quantification of small amounts of cancer markers, such as Angiopoietin-1 (ANG-1), and their modulation during the early stages of tumor development. XXIII Ciclo 1979