TSANet: multibranch attention deep neural network for classifying tactile selective attention in brain-computer interfaces.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) enable communication between the brain and a computer and electroencephalography (EEG) has been widely used to implement BCIs because of its high temporal resolution and noninvasiveness. Recently, a tactile-based EEG task was introduced to overcome the current limitations of visual-based tasks, such as visual fatigue from sustained attention. However, the classification performance of tactile-based BCIs as control signals is unsatisfactory. Therefore, a novel classification approach is required for this purpose. Here, we propose TSANet, a deep neural network, that uses multibranch convolutional neural networks and a feature-attention mechanism to classify tactile selective attention (TSA) in a tactile-based BCI system. We tested TSANet under three evaluation conditions, namely, within-subject, leave-one-out, and cross-subject. We found that TSANet achieved the highest classification performance compared with conventional deep neural network models under all evaluation conditions. Additionally, we show that TSANet extracts reasonable features for TSA by investigating the weights of spatial filters. Our results demonstrate that TSANet has the potential to be used as an efficient end-to-end learning approach in tactile-based BCIs. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13534-023-00309-4.

Enhanced therapeutic effect of paclitaxel with a natural polysaccharide carrier for local injection in breast cancer.

The side effect and inefficiency of paclitaxel (PTX) in clinic have became the major problem in field of cancer chemotherapy. The local drug delivery constructed by injectable hydrogel has been suggested as the alternative due to its superior properties such as tumor selectivity, minimally invasive administration and sustained drug release behavior. Polysaccharides have been commonly used as a gelling agent to construct injectable hydrogel due to its wide resources, biocompatibility and bioactive functions. Here, we reported an injectable drug carrier with enhanced therapeutic effect based on Pinus koraiensis polysaccharide (PKP). The interaction, morphology and mechanical properties were studied. Interestingly, gels exhibited excellent injectable property including rapid recovery time, excellent thixotropy ability and good rheological property after injection, and these special properties make them more suitable to be constructed as an injectable drug carrier. In addition, the biocompatibility of gel was demonstrated in terms of hemolysis analysis. PTX-loaded gel showed excellent tumor inhibition effect against 4T1 and MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines in vitro, and exhibited the significant tumor growth suppression and reduced systemic toxicity in vivo. The successful construction of PTX-loaded gel demonstrates that PKP can be used as a promising carrier in local drug delivery.

Protective effects of 6-ureido/thioureido-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols against 4-hydroxynonenal-induced cell death in adult retinal pigment epithelial-19 cells.

Dysfunction or progressive degeneration of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) contributes in the initial pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) causing irreversible vision loss, which makes RPE the prime target of the disease. The present study aimed to identify compounds to protect 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE)-induced RPE cell death by inhibiting NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX4) activity, not just as free radical scavengers, using ARPE-19, a human adult retinal pigment epithelial cell line, as a RPE representative. Novel thirty-two 6-ureido/thioureido-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ol derivatives 17 were synthesized and tested. We found that there was a strong correlation between level of protective effect of compounds 17 against 4-HNE-induced APRE-19 cell death and that of inhibitory activity against 4-HNE-induced superoxide production, and that most of the compounds 17 showed minimal DPPH radical scavenging activity. Compound 17-28 showed the best protective activity against 4-HNE-induced superoxide production (79.5% inhibition) and cell death (85.1% recovery) at 10 µM concentration, which was better than that of VAS2870, a NOX2/4 inhibitor. In addition, compound 17-28 blocked 4-HNE-induced apoptosis of ARPE-19 cells in a concentration-dependent manner. The results indicate that compound 17-28 may be a lead compound to develop AMD therapeutics.

In vitro and in vivo inhibitory activity of 6-amino-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols against inflammatory bowel disease.

Although the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is complex, attachment and infiltration of leukocytes to gut epithelium induced by pro-inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) represents the initial step of inflammation in IBD. Previously, we have reported that some 6-amino-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols have significant levels of antiangiogenic activity via PI3K inhibition. Based on the reports that angiogenesis is involved in the aggravation of IBD and that PI3K is a potential target for IBD therapy, we investigated whether the scaffold has inhibitory activity against in vitro and in vivo models of colitis. Many analogues showed >80% inhibition against TNF-α-induced monocyte adhesion to colon epithelial cells at 1µM. Compound 8m showed IC50=0.19µM, which is about five orders of magnitude better than that of 5-aminosalicylic acid (5-ASA, IC50=18.1mM), a positive control. In a rat model of 2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced colitis, orally administered 8m dramatically ameliorated TNBS-induced colon inflammation. It was demonstrated by a high level of suppression in myeloperoxidase (MPO), a surrogate marker of colitis, as well as almost perfect recovery of colon and body weights in a dose-dependent manner. Compared to sulfasalazine, a prodrug of 5-ASA, compound 8m showed >300-fold better efficacy in those parameters. Taken together, 6-amino-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols can provide a novel platform for anti-IBD drug discovery.

5-Hydroxy-7-azaindolin-2-one, a novel hybrid of pyridinol and sunitinib: design, synthesis and cytotoxicity against cancer cells.

Angiogenesis plays important roles in tumor growth and metastasis. Sunitinib (Sutent®) is an antitumor agent targeting receptor tyrosine kinases which are involved in angiogenesis as well as cancer cell growth and survival. Using the pyridin-3-ol scaffold, which was previously reported as an excellent antioxidant and antiangiogenic platform, we have synthesized sunitinib mimics 6 by hybridizing bicyclic pyridinol 4 as a key scaffold and pyrrole-2-carbaldehydes 7 as side chains. Cytotoxicity assays showed that compounds 6 have comparable to better anticancer activity than sunitinib against five different cancer cell lines. In addition, compounds 6 showed even lower levels of cytotoxicity against normal cells, resulting in up to 26-fold better safety windows, than sunitinib. Signaling pathway-associated transcription factor reporter assay and western blot analyses revealed that apoptosis induction in MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells by 6F is mainly mediated through the p53 increase and down-regulation of phospho-signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and its target gene products, cyclin D, Bcl-2, and survivin. The data strongly suggest that our hybrid compounds can provide a novel anticancer scaffold with improved and safer cytotoxicity profiles than sunitinib.

Synthesis and antiangiogenic activity of 6-amido-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols.

We recently reported that 6-aminoalkyl-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols, novel series of 6-aminopyridin-3-ol-based antioxidants, have high antiangiogenic activities. In pursuit of wider variety in the analogues, we here report the synthesis and antiangiogenic activities of 6-amidoalkyl-2,4,5-trimethylpyridin-3-ols, which would not be considered excellent antioxidants because of the poorer electron-donating effect of the C(6)-amido group than the corresponding C(6)-amino group. The selected 6-amido compounds showed up to several fold-higher antiangiogenic activities and up to an order of magnitude better antitumor activities in the chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay than SU4312, a positive control. We also found that paracetamol, as a direct phenolic analogue of our simplest 6-amidopyridin-3-ol, showed a moderate level of antiangiogenic activity. We propose this study will offer a basis for a scaffold of novel angiogenesis inhibitors that can perturb angiogenesis-related pathologies.