About the Authors

Federica Collino

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Biotechnology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

Maria Chiara Deregibus

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Biotechnology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

Stefania Bruno

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Biotechnology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy, SiS-Ter S.p.A., Palazzo Pignano, Crema, Italy

Luca Sterpone

Affiliation Department of Automatic and Informatics, Politecnico, Torino, Italy

Giulia Aghemo

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Biotechnology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

Laura Viltono

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Biotechnology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

Ciro Tetta

Affiliation Fresenius Medical Care, Bad Homburg, Germany

Giovanni Camussi

giovanni.camussi@unito.it

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Biotechnology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

Competing Interests

S.B. (Sis-Ter) and C.T. (Fresenius Medical Care) are employed by a commercial company and contributed to the study as researchers performing experiments and providing reagents/materials. G.C. and M.C.D. are named inventors in related patents (Publication numbers: WO2009057165 A1 and WO2009050742 A1). This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLos ONE policies on sharing data and materials as detailed online in PLos ONE guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: FC MCD GC. Performed the experiments: FC MCD SB GA LV CT GC. Analyzed the data: LS GC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MCD CT. Wrote the paper: FC MCD GC.