Design, synthesis, structure-activity relationship studies, and evaluation of novel GLS1 inhibitors.

Glutaminase converts glutamine into glutamic acid and has two isoforms: glutaminase 1 (GLS1) and glutaminase 2 (GLS2). GLS1 is overexpressed in several tumors, and research to develop glutaminase inhibitors as antitumor drugs is currently underway. The present study examined candidate GLS1 inhibitors using in silico screening and attempted to synthesize novel GLS1 inhibitors and assess their GLS1 inhibitory activities in a mouse kidney extract and against recombinant mouse and human GLS1. Novel compounds were synthesized using compound C as the lead compound, and their GLS1 inhibitory activities were evaluated using the mouse kidney extract. Among the derivatives tested, the trans-4-hydroxycyclohexylamide derivative 2j exhibited the strongest inhibitory activity. We also assessed the GLS1 inhibitory activities of the derivatives 2j, 5i, and 8a against recombinant mouse and human GLS1. The derivatives 5i and 8a significantly decreased the production of glutamic acid at 10 mM. In conclusion, we herein identified two compounds that exhibited GLS1 inhibitory activities with equal potencies as known GLS1 inhibitors. These results will contribute to the development of effective novel GLS1 inhibitors with more potent inhibitory activity.

Design and structural optimization of thiadiazole derivatives with potent GLS1 inhibitory activity.

GLS1 is an attractive target not only as anticancer agents but also as candidates for various potential pharmaceutical applications such as anti-aging and anti-obesity treatments. We performed docking simulations based on the complex crystal structure of GLS1 and its inhibitor CB-839 and found that compound A bearing a thiadiazole skeleton exhibits GLS1 inhibition. Furthermore, we synthesized 27 thiadiazole derivatives in an effort to obtain a more potent GLS1 inhibitor. Among the synthesized derivatives, 4d showed more potent GLS1 inhibitory activity (IC50 of 46.7 µM) than known GLS1 inhibitor DON and A. Therefore, 4d is a very promising novel GLS1 inhibitor.

Plasma NfL is associated with mild cognitive decline in patients with diabetes.

BACKGROUND: Patients with diabetes are at a higher risk for cognitive decline. Thus, biomarkers that can provide early and simple detection of cognitive decline are required. Neurofilament light chain (NfL) is a cytoskeletal protein that constitutes neural axons. Plasma NfL levels are elevated when neurodegeneration occurs. Here, we investigated whether plasma NfL levels were associated with cognitive decline in patients with type 2 diabetes. METHOD: This study included 183 patients with type 2 diabetes who visited Osaka University Hospital. All participants were tested for cognitive function using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT). NfL levels were analysed in the plasma and the relationship between NfL and cognitive function was examined. RESULTS: Lower RBMT-standardized profile scores (SPS) or MMSE scores correlated with higher plasma NfL levels (one-way analysis of variance: MMSE, P = 0.0237; RBMT-SPS, P = 0.0001). Furthermore, plasma NfL levels (ß = -0.34, P = 0.0005) and age (ß = -0.19, P = 0.016) were significantly associated with the RBMT score after multivariable regression adjustment. CONCLUSIONS: Plasma NfL levels were correlated with mild cognitive decline which is detected by the RBMT but not the MMSE in patients with type 2 diabetes. This suggests that plasma NfL levels may provide a valuable clinical tool for identifying mild cognitive decline in patients with diabetes.

Adapting the Number of Questions Based on Detected Psychological Distress for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy With an Embodied Conversational Agent: Comparative Study.

BACKGROUND: The high prevalence of mental illness is a critical social problem. The limited availability of mental health services is a major factor that exacerbates this problem. One solution is to deliver cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) using an embodied conversational agent (ECA). ECAs make it possible to provide health care without location or time constraints. One of the techniques used in CBT is Socratic questioning, which guides users to correct negative thoughts. The effectiveness of this approach depends on a therapist's skill to adapt to the user's mood or distress level. However, current ECAs do not possess this skill. Therefore, it is essential to implement this adaptation ability to the ECAs. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop and evaluate a method that automatically adapts the number of Socratic questions based on the level of detected psychological distress during a CBT session with an ECA. We hypothesize that this adaptive approach to selecting the number of questions will lower psychological distress, reduce negative emotional states, and produce more substantial cognitive changes compared with a random number of questions. METHODS: In this study, which envisions health care support in daily life, we recruited participants aged from 18 to 65 years for an experiment that involved 2 different conditions: an ECA that adapts a number of questions based on psychological distress detection or an ECA that only asked a random number of questions. The participants were assigned to 1 of the 2 conditions, experienced a single CBT session with an ECA, and completed questionnaires before and after the session. RESULTS: The participants completed the experiment. There were slight differences in sex, age, and preexperimental psychological distress levels between the 2 conditions. The adapted number of questions condition showed significantly lower psychological distress than the random number of questions condition after the session. We also found a significant difference in the cognitive change when the number of questions was adapted based on the detected distress level, compared with when the number of questions was fewer than what was appropriate for the level of distress detected. CONCLUSIONS: The results show that an ECA adapting the number of Socratic questions based on detected distress levels increases the effectiveness of CBT. Participants who received an adaptive number of questions experienced greater reductions in distress than those who received a random number of questions. In addition, the participants showed a greater amount of cognitive change when the number of questions matched the detected distress level. This suggests that adapting the question quantity based on distress level detection can improve the results of CBT delivered by an ECA. These results illustrate the advantages of ECAs, paving the way for mental health care that is more tailored and effective.

Association of psychological and physical stress response with weight gain in university employees in Japan: a retrospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVES: To clarify the association of job stressor score (A score), psychological and physical stress response score (B score), and social support (C score), with the incidence of ≥10% weight gain. METHODS: This study included 10,036 university employees who completed the brief job stress questionnaire (BJSQ) and annual health checkups between 2016 and 2021. The incidence of ≥10% weight gain from baseline weight was measured. Participants were classified into four categories based on their BJSQ dimension scores. RESULTS: B score was significantly associated with the incidence of weight gain, whereas A and C scores were not. Participants of Q75-89, and Q90-100 categories of B score were at significantly high risk of the incidence of ≥10% weight gain. CONCLUSIONS: Psychological and physical stress response had an increasing risk of weight gain.

Breakfast Frequency and Smoking Initiation in University Students: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Smoking causes various health problems. Limited studies have reported a clinical effect of skipping breakfast on smoking initiation among adolescents. This retrospective cohort study aimed to assess the dose-dependent association between skipping breakfast and smoking initiation in university students. This study included 17,493 male and 8880 female students aged 18-22 years at a national university in Japan. The association between breakfast frequency (eating every day and skipping occasionally, often, and usually) and smoking initiation was evaluated using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for clinically relevant factors. Smoking initiation was observed in 2027 (11.6%) male and 197 (2.2%) female students over the median observational period of 3.0 and 3.1 years. Skipping breakfast was significantly associated with smoking initiation in a dose-dependent fashion in male students (the adjusted hazard ratios [95% confidence interval] of eating breakfast every day and skipping occasionally, often, and usually: 1.00 [reference], 1.30 [1.15, 1.46], 1.47 [1.21, 1.79], and 1.77 [1.40, 2.25], respectively). Female students skipping breakfast occasionally and often were more vulnerable to smoking initiation than those who ate breakfast every day (1.00 [reference], 1.86 [1.24, 2.78], 2.97 [1.66, 5.32], and 1.76 [0.55, 5.64], respectively). Breakfast frequency may be useful to identify university students at risk of smoking initiation who need improvement in their health literacy.

Paclitaxel induces neurotoxicity through endoplasmic reticulum stress.

Due to chemotherapy, the majority of breast cancer patients survive, but frequently complain of chemotherapy-associated cognitive impairment. This phenomenon is termed "chemobrain" or "chemofog" in the literature. However, its mechanisms are unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the mechanisms of paclitaxel (Px)-induced neurotoxicity, with a focus on endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. To investigate Px-induced neurotoxicity and ER stress induction, SK-N-SH cells were treated with 1, 10, 50, and 100 µM Px for 24 h. Neurotoxicity was assessed using MTS viability assays, and ER stress was assessed by evaluating the expression of phosphorylated elF2α (phospho-eIF2α), C/EBP homologous protein (CHOP), and cleaved caspase 4 and caspase 3 (the active form of each caspase). Furthermore, to investigate whether immunoglobulin heavy-chain binding protein (BiP) inducer X (BIX), which induces the molecular chaperone BiP, could attenuate Px-induced neurotoxicity, SK-N-SH cells were pre-treated for 12 h with 3.5 µM BIX before Px treatment. Neurotoxicity was observed in SK-N-SH cells treated with Px in a dose-dependent manner compared with vehicle control. Furthermore, phospho-eIF2α, CHOP, and activated caspase 4 and caspase 3 were significantly induced in Px-treated cells. In addition, pre-treatment with BIX significantly attenuated the induction of CHOP and activated caspase 4 and caspase 3. The viability of BIX pre-treated cells prior to Px treatment was significantly increased compared with cells that were not treated with BIX. Our results suggest that Px induces neurotoxicity in part through activating the ER stress response. Our findings should contribute to novel approaches regarding the mechanism of Px-induced neurotoxicity, including chemobrain.

Involvement of endoplasmic reticulum stress in tauopathy.

Tauopathy is a pathological condition with an abnormal intracellular accumulation of tau protein in neurons and glias, which is a feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as frontotemporal lobar degenerations (FTLD). Recent reports showed that tauopathy occupies an important position for pathological process of dementia generally. Previously, we reported that endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress has an influence on the onset of AD. In addition, some reports on brain autopsy findings suggest that ER stress is associated with AD and tauopathy. However, the mechanism underlying the association between ER stress and tauopathy is still unknown. Here, we show that ER stress, induced by glucose deprivation or chemicals, increases total endogenous tau protein in cultured neurons and primary cultured neurons. Under ER stress, no significant differences were observed in the transcription of tau, and no differences were observed in the translation of tau with or without the 5'-untranslated region (5'UTR) of tau. In contrast, the degradation rate of tau was decreased by 20% under ER stress. ER stress reduced the binding between tau and carboxyl terminus of Hsc70-interacting protein (CHIP), ubiquitin E3 ligase for tau. These results suggest that ER stress increases total tau protein and its mechanism is due to the decrease in the binding between tau and CHIP, which delays the degradation of tau protein through the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. This mechanism may provide clue to treatment for tauopathy.

Linguistic Features of Clients and Counselors for Early Detection of Mental Health Issues in Online Text-based Counseling.

Online counseling is essential for overcoming mobility restrictions, schedule limitations, and mental health stigma. However, government counseling offices are being inun-dated with consultations for which non-mental health supports are targeted. Therefore, we aim to create a classification model that classifies whether the clients have mental health issues or other issues. We expect to support counselors by presenting the classification results. We conducted the first automatic detection of clients who might be suffering from mental health issues and used almost 1000 actual counseling sessions for our machine learning framework. We achieved an F1-score of 0.646 by classifying dialogue sessions using features such as frequency-inverse, document frequency, document embedding of a large-scale language model, linguistic inquiry and word count, topic modeling, and statistics of dialogue sentences. In addition, we performed dimensionality reduction with principal component analysis. We also conducted evaluation experiments using dialogue sentences from the beginning to the middle of sessions as input and clarified the relationship between the number of messages in the dialogues and the transition in the classification performance. We also identified the words that contribute to detecting mental health issues for each client and counselor. Clinical relevance-This study makes it possible to detect the trends identified in a client's anxieties during counseling. Our findings are critical for designing systems that assist counselors.

Design and synthesis of pyrido[2,3-d]pyrimidine derivatives for a novel PAC1 receptor antagonist.

Since PA-8 (5-(4-(Allyloxy)-3-methoxyphenyl)-2-amino-5,8-dihydro-3H,6H-pyrido[2,3-d]pyrimidine-4,7-dione) was recently identified as a novel small-molecule antagonist of the pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) type I (PAC1) receptor, a series of pyrido[2,3-d]pyrimidine derivatives have been designed, synthesized and subsequently evaluated for antagonistic activity on the PAC1 receptor. In this study, we synthesized 21 derivatives based on the PA-8 structure. Among them, the compound 2o (2-Amino-5-(3-trifluoromethoxy-phenyl)-5,8-dihydro-3H,6H-pyrido[2,3-d]pyrimidine-4,7-dione) showed more potent antagonistic activities than PA-8. Intrathecal (i.t.) injection of 2o blocked the induction of PACAP-induced aversive behaviors and mechanical allodynia in mice, and the effects were more potent than those of PA-8. A single i.t. injection of 2o also inhibited spinal nerve ligation (SNL)-induced mechanical allodynia. Repeated intraperitoneal administration of 2o gradually reduced the SNL-induced mechanical allodynia, and this effect appeared earlier than for PA-8. In addition, 2o exhibited a favorable ADME and pharmacokinetics profiles. These results suggest that 2o may become an analgesic for the treatment of neuropathic pain.

Increased digital media use is associated with sleep problems among university students: A study during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.

This retrospective cohort study investigates the association between the incidence of sleep problems and changes in digital media use among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. It used data from annual health check-ups performed at a Japanese university in 2019 and 2020. Students undergoing these check-ups were identified to respond to questions about sleep problems, digital media use, breakfast and exercise habits, and stress. In total, 3,869 students were included in the analysis. The association between the incidence of sleep problems in 2020 and the changes in digital media use between 2019 and 2020 was assessed using logistic regression models. The rate of long digital media use (≥ 2 hours) in 2019 was 42.6%, while in 2020 it was 53.6%. Incidence of sleep problems was observed in 244 students (6.3%) in 2020. There were 786 students (20.3%) who used digital media for ≤ 2 h in 2019 and ≥ 2 h in 2020. From the sample, 66 students (8.4%) reported incidence of sleep problems in 2020. Additionally, those respondents who specifically reported increased digital media use between 2019 and 2020 (increased use) where at greater risk (OR: 1.76; 95% CI: 1.21, 2.55) of reporting sleep problems in 2020, even after controlling for other study variables. Thus, this study provides evidence that the incidence of sleep problems has had a significant association with an increase in digital media use among university students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings highlight the importance of ensuring appropriate digital media use among students for improved quality of sleep.

Association of weekday-to-weekend sleep differences and stress response among a Japanese working population: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the relationship between differences in weekday-to-weekend sleep habits and stress responses in a working population. METHODS: This cross-sectional study used data from university workers on sleep habits, differences in sleep duration between weekdays and weekends, and each midpoint of the sleep phase on weekdays and weekends. Social jetlag was defined as the difference in the midpoint of the sleep phase between weekdays and weekends. In addition, the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire assessed stress responses and stress-related factors. To examine sleep-related factors affecting stress responses, regression analysis was performed with adjustments for age, sex, and stress-related factors. RESULTS: Analyzed were 2,739 participants. Sleep duration differences obtained by subtracting sleep duration on weekdays from that on weekends, social jetlag, and weekday sleep duration were significantly associated with an increased risk of stress responses in a univariate linear regression model. Adjusting for age, sex, job stressors, and stressor buffering factors did not change this trend. However, when additionally adjusting for all sleep parameters, only sleep duration differences and weekday sleep duration were significantly associated with stress responses (ß 0.67 [95% CI 0.24, 1.10], p = 0.002), (-0.66 [-1.20, -0.13], p = 0.015). CONCLUSIONS: This study provided further evidence that weekday sleep duration and weekday-to-weekend sleep duration differences were independently associated with stress responses even when considering stress-related factors. However, social jetlag was not clearly associated with stress responses. Our findings highlighted the necessity of securing sufficient sleep for stress management and mental health promotion in a working population.

Renal function is associated with blood neurofilament light chain level in older adults.

Neurofilament light chain (NfL) is a novel biomarker of neurodegenerative diseases. It is detectable in the peripheral blood, allowing low-invasive assessment of early signs of neurodegeneration. The level of NfL gradually increases with age; however, what other factors affect it remains unclear. The present study examined the association between blood NfL level and renal function among healthy participants undergoing a health check (n = 43, serum NfL) and patients with diabetes mellitus (n = 188, plasma NfL). All participants were 60 years of age or older; none were diagnosed with dementia. In each group, levels of blood NfL and serum creatinine significantly correlated (coefficient r = 0.50, 0.56). These associations remained statistically significant even after adjustment for age, sex, and body mass index. These findings indicate that blood NfL level might be partially affected by renal function. We recommend measuring renal function for a more precise evaluation of neuroaxonal damage, in particular, among older adults.

Altered localization of amyloid precursor protein under endoplasmic reticulum stress.

Recent reports have shown that the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is relevant to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease. Following the amyloid cascade hypothesis, we therefore attempted to investigate the effects of ER stress on amyloid-beta peptide (Abeta) generation. In this study, we found that ER stress altered the localization of amyloid precursor protein (APP) from late compartments to early compartments of the secretory pathway, and decreased the level of Abeta 40 and Abeta 42 release by beta- and gamma-cutting. Transient transfection with BiP/GRP78 also caused a shift of APP and a reduction in Abeta secretion. It was revealed that the ER stress response facilitated binding of BiP/GRP78 to APP, thereby causing it to be retained in the early compartments apart from a location suitable for the cleavages of Abeta. These findings suggest that induction of BiP/GRP78 during ER stress may be one of the regulatory mechanisms of Abeta generation.