Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a naturally occurring biopolymer that has been employed for a plethora of medicinal applications. Nevertheless, as HA is a natural polysaccharide, it can be a substrate able to promote microbial growth and proliferation. Biopolymer−drug conjugates have gained attention over the years to overcome drawbacks of each single component. Within this context, thymol (Thy), a phenolic compound occurring in essential oils (EOs) extracted from Thymus and Origanum, has been largely studied for its antimycotic applications. However, it is characterized by a low water solubility and moderate cytotoxicity. Herein, we report an innovative HA−thymol conjugate (HA-Thy) biomaterial to circumvent the drawbacks of free thymol use by providing the polymer conjugate with the beneficial properties of both components. Preliminary biological tests evidenced the decrease of thymol cytotoxicity for the HA-Thy conjugate, paired with a promising antibiofilm formation activity against Candida albicans, similar to pure thymol, highlighting its potential application as a preservative biomaterial in formulations.

The TCO-Asa is a 2015 established team of high-school students of the Liceo Scientifico T. Calzecchi Onesti, in Fermo (Italy), who built a detector instrumented by consumer components including a CMOS camera and a silicon photomultiplier readout by the open-source ArduSiPM kit, to study the Cherenkov effect in water. This proceeding presents the main activities of the students that included the definition and design of the detector geometry, the realisation of the external light-tight box by Scanny3D, the optimisation of the optical coupling between the water and the sensors, the experiences with 18 F (prepared by Acom SRL) and 226