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An innovative hyaluronan-based nano-delivery system is proposed for the active targeting towards ER+ breast cancer. Hyaluronic acid (HA), an endogenous and bioactive anionic polysaccharide, is functionalized with estradiol (ES), a sexual hormone involved in the development of some hormone-dependent tumors, to give an amphiphilic derivative (HA-ES) able to spontaneously self-assemble in water to form soft nanoparticles or nanogels (NHs). The synthetic strategy used to obtain the polymer derivatives and the physico-chemical properties of the obtained nanogels (ES-NHs) are reported. ES-NHs ability to entrap hydrophobic molecules has also been investigated, by loading curcumin (CUR) and docetaxel (DTX), both able to inhibit the growth of ER+ breast cancer. The formulations are studied for their capability to inhibit the growth of the MCF-7 cell line, thus evaluating their efficacy and potential as a selective drug delivery systems. Our results demonstrate that ES-NHs have not toxic effects on the cell line, and that both ES-NHs/CUR and ES-NHs/DTX treatments inhibit MCF-7 cell growth, with ES-NHs/DTX effect higher than that of free DTX. Our findings support the use of ES-NHs to deliver drugs to ER+ breast cancer cells, assuming a receptor-dependent targeting., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Metabarcoding through Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized environmental biological studies. The availability of this technical approach has opened the opportunity for a systematic implementation of fungal metabarcoding analysis in forensics, where standardized, sensitive and reproducible protocols are highly desirable. In the present paper, a pipeline including a semi-automated molecular protocol and user-friendly bioinformatics tools are applied to several kinds of environmental samples and forensic caseworks. The identification of fungi that characterize specific environments (like Aspergillus for indoor walls, or Penicillium, Debaryomices and Wickerhamomyces for food storage) can be informative for the provenance of samples. In some situations, fungal analysis cannot allow the identification of a defined environment but seems useful to cluster samples with similar provenance. Based on these considerations, fungal analysis can be included in a wider process of non-human DNA identification in order to provide clues on sample provenance., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)