Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of cathepsin B cleavage albumin-binding SN38 prodrug in breast cancer.

Here, we introduce a novel and effective approach utilizing a cathepsin B cleavage albumin-binding SN38 prodrug specifically designed for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Termed Mal-va-mac-SN38, our prodrug exhibits a unique ability to rapidly and covalently bind with endogenous albumin, resulting in the formation of HSA-va-mac-SN38. This prodrug demonstrates exceptional stability in human plasma. Importantly, HSA-va-mac-SN38 showcases an impressive enhancement in cellular uptake by 4T1 breast cancer cells, primarily facilitated through caveolin-mediated endocytosis. Intriguingly, the release of the active SN38, is triggered by the enzymatic activity of cathepsin B within the lysosomal environment. In vivo studies employing a lung metastasis 4T1 breast cancer model underscore the potency of HSA-va-mac-SN38. Histological immunohistochemical analyses further illuminate the multifaceted impact of our prodrug, showcasing elevated levels of apoptosis, downregulated expression of matrix metalloproteinases, and inhibition of angiogenesis, all critical factors contributing to the anti-metastatic effect observed. Biodistribution studies elucidate the capacity of Mal-va-mac-SN38 to augment tumor accumulation through covalent binding to serum albumin, presenting a potential avenue for targeted therapeutic interventions. Collectively, our findings propose a promising therapeutic avenue for metastatic breast cancer, through the utilization of a cathepsin B-cleavable albumin-binding prodrug.

Scale-Space Feature Recalibration Network for Single Image Deraining.

Computer vision technology is increasingly being used in areas such as intelligent security and autonomous driving. Users need accurate and reliable visual information, but the images obtained under severe weather conditions are often disturbed by rainy weather, causing image scenes to look blurry. Many current single image deraining algorithms achieve good performance but have limitations in retaining detailed image information. In this paper, we design a Scale-space Feature Recalibration Network (SFR-Net) for single image deraining. The proposed network improves the image feature extraction and characterization capability of a Multi-scale Extraction Recalibration Block (MERB) using dilated convolution with different convolution kernel sizes, which results in rich multi-scale rain streaks features. In addition, we develop a Subspace Coordinated Attention Mechanism (SCAM) and embed it into MERB, which combines coordinated attention recalibration and a subspace attention mechanism to recalibrate the rain streaks feature information learned from the feature extraction phase and eliminate redundant feature information to enhance the transfer of important feature information. Meanwhile, the overall SFR-Net structure uses dense connection and cross-layer feature fusion to repeatedly utilize the feature maps, thus enhancing the understanding of the network and avoiding gradient disappearance. Through extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets, the proposed method outperforms the recent state-of-the-art deraining algorithms in terms of both the rain removal effect and the preservation of image detail information.

Synthesis of Hydantoin Androgen Receptor Antagonists and Study on Their Antagonistic Activity.

Hydroxymethylthiohydantoin, hydroxymethylthiohydantoin, and hydantoin, containing a pyridine group, were synthesized to study their androgen receptor antagonistic activities. Among them, compounds 6a/6c/7g/19a/19b exhibited excellent androgen receptor antagonistic activity, which was consistent with or even superior to enzalutamide. In addition, compounds 19a and 19b exhibited better antiproliferative activity than enzalutamide in prostate cancer cells. The results show that compound 19a has great potential as a new AR antagonist.

Design and synthesis of new lenalidomide analogs via Suzuki cross-coupling reaction.

Lenalidomide is a cereblon modulator known for its antitumor, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory properties in clinical applications. Recently, some reported lenalidomide analogs could exhibit a significant bioactivity through various modifications in the isoindolinone ring. In this study, we designed and synthesized a series of novel lenalidomide analogs on the basis of the installation of a methylene chain at the C-4 position of isoindolinone via the Suzuki cross-coupling reaction. These new compounds were further evaluated for their in vitro antiproliferative activities against two tumor cell lines (MM.1S and Mino). Specifically, compound 4c displayed the strongest antiproliferative activity against the MM.1S (IC50 = 0.27 ± 0.03 µM) and Mino (IC50 = 5.65 ± 0.58 µM) tumor cell lines. In summary, we have developed a new synthetic strategy for C-4 derivatization of lenalidomide, providing a bioactive scaffold that could be used to discover further potential antitumor lead compounds in pharmaceutical research.

Synthesis of Aryl Propionamide Scaffold Containing a Pentafluorosulfanyl Moiety as SARMs.

The pentafluorosulfane (SF5) group, as a more electronegative bioisostere than the trifluoromethyl (CF3) group, has been gaining greater attention and increasingly reported usage in medicinal chemistry. Ostarine is the selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs) containing a CF3 group in clinical trial III. In this study, 21 ostarine derivatives for replacing the CF3 group with SF5 substituents were synthesized. Some SF5-derivatives showed androgen receptor (AR) agonistic activities in vitro. The results pointed to the potential of using this scaffold to develop new AR agonists.

Synthesis of androgen receptor antagonists containing a pentafluorosulfanyl (SF5 ) moiety.

A novel scaffold of pentafluorosulfanyl (SF5 )-containing enzalutamide analogues was discovered for potent androgen receptor (AR) antagonists through rational drug design. Several compounds showed good biological profiles in AR binding. Of the derivatives studied, compound 8a had potent AR antagonist activity (IC50 = 7.1 ± 1.0 µM) and high efficacy (104.5 ± 12.8%). It exhibited an inhibitory effect comparable to that of enzalutamide (inhibition = 66.0 and 77.9%, respectively) in a prostate cancer cell line. The results point to the potential of using this scaffold to develop new AR antagonists.

High-precision frequency estimator by using discrete Fourier transform and asymmetric discrete time Fourier transform samples.

Fast and accurate frequency estimation is significant for instrumentation and measurement. A sinusoid frequency estimator using discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is presented. DFT is implemented on the sinusoid and the maximum DFT bin is sought out to obtain the coarse estimate. Different from all the existing methods, two asymmetric discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT) samples situated at arbitrary positions on the same side of the maximum DFT bin are employed to get the fine estimate. The theoretical mean square error is analyzed. To evaluate the estimation performance, the presented estimator is compared with the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and state-of-art estimators through computer simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that the presented algorithm is closer to the CRLB compared with the competing methods when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) varies in a large range and is unbiased at high SNR.

A water-soluble probe with p-hydroxybenzyl quaternary ammonium linker for selective imaging in senescent cells.

A water-soluble probe with p-hydroxybenzyl quaternary ammonium linker, FR-2a, for selective imaging in senescent cells is reported. Probe FR-2a integrated water-soluble fluorophore (HT-4a) and ß-galactosidase (ß-gal) trigger into one entity by a p-hydroxybenzyl quaternary ammonium linker. HT-4a is a styryl-based push-pull benzothiazole fluorophore with attractive properties, including excellent water-solubility, intense fluorescence emission and a large Stokes shift (161 nm), characterized by an intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) excited state. The formation of quaternary ammonium deactivated the ICT state, resulting in fluorescence quenching of FR-2a. In the presence of ß-gal, the glycosidic bond was hydrolyzed and fluorophore HT-4a was released through self-immolative process, resulting in effective fluorescence recovery. FR-2a shows high affinity to ß-gal (Km = 1.33 µM), exhibiting good sensitivity, selectivity and stability for imaging in senescent cells.

Design and synthesis of aryloxypropanolamine as ß3-adrenergic receptor antagonist in cancer and lipolysis.

ß-adrenergic receptors (ß-ARs) are broadly distributed in various tissues and regulate a panel of important physiological functions and disease states including cancer. Above all, ß3-adrenergic receptor (ß3-AR) plays a significant role in regulating lipolysis and thermogenesis in adipose tissue. In this study, we designed and synthesized a series of novel L-748,337 derivatives as selective human ß3-AR antagonists. Among all the tested L-748,337 analogs, compound 23d was found to display 23-fold more potent ß3-AR antagonist activity (EC50 = 0.5117 nM) than L-748,337 (EC50 = 11.91 nM). In vivo, compound 23d could alleviate weight loss and inhibit tumor growth in C26 tumor cachexia animal model.

Design and synthesis of Atglistatin derivatives as adipose triglyceride lipase inhibitors.

Adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) is a rate-limiting enzyme that mobilizes fatty acids from cellular triglyceride stores. Metabolic syndrome, which refers to a group of abnormalities that occur together and increase the risk of coronary artery disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and cachexia, can be treated using ATGL-specific inhibitors. Atglistatin (1) is the first small-molecule inhibitor of ATGL. In this study, we designed and synthesized 29 Atglistatin derivatives and evaluated their inhibition of forskolin-stimulated lipolysis in 3T3-L1 adipocytes as an indicator of their potential to inhibit ATGL in adipose tissues. Among all the tested Atglistatin analogs, we previously found that the thiourea compound 9e showed potent ATGL inhibitory activity in vitro, which was much stronger than that of Atglistatin, and its inhibitory activity in vivo was similar to that of Atglistatin. This tool compound could be used to study the pathophysiology and druggability of ATGL in animal models of metabolic disease and cachexia.