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Pancreatic cancer, with its increasing incidence and lowest 5-year survival rate, is predicted to become the second leading cause of cancer deaths by 2030. Current clinical trials have shown limited improvement, highlighting the need for new therapies. The sigma-2 receptor (S2R), with roles in tumor progression, is a target for novel thiosemicarbazones (TSCs). FA4 has shown potent activity against pancreatic cancer in vivo . We synthesized complexes of FA4 with Cu(II) and Pt(II), and compared their efficacy with complexes of the non-S2R-targeting TSC 1 . TSC-Cu exhibited over 50-fold higher in vitro cytotoxicity than TSCs-Pt, which was less active than TSCs. FA4 -Cu induced apoptotic cell death via ER and mitochondrial stress showing more potent activity than FA4 . This in vitro effect was replicated in the preclinical PANC-1 model, where FA4 -Cu was more potent than FA4 , 1 , and 1 -Cu. These results support further exploration of FA4 -Cu as a potential therapy for pancreatic cancer.

Currently, there are no reliable biomarkers for autism diagnosis. The heterogeneity of autism and several co-occurring conditions are key challenges to establishing these. Here, we used untargeted mass spectrometry-based urine metabolomics to investigate metabolic differences for autism diagnosis and autistic traits in a well-characterized twin cohort (N = 105). We identified 208 metabolites in the urine samples of the twins. No clear, significant metabolic drivers for autism diagnosis were detected when controlling for other neurodevelopmental conditions. However, we identified nominally significant changes for several metabolites. For instance, phenylpyruvate (p = 0.019) and taurine (p = 0.032) were elevated in the autism group, while carnitine (p = 0.047) was reduced. We furthermore accounted for the shared factors, such as genetics within the twin pairs, and report additional metabolite differences. Based on the nominally significant metabolites for autism diagnosis, the arginine and proline metabolism pathway (p = 0.024) was enriched. We also investigated the association between quantitative autistic traits, as measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale 2nd Edition, and metabolite differences, identifying a greater number of nominally significant metabolites and pathways. A significant positive association between indole-3-acetate and autistic traits was observed within the twin pairs (adjusted p = 0.031). The utility of urine biomarkers in autism, therefore, remains unclear, with mixed findings from different study populations., Competing Interests: A.A., F.M., and K.T. declare no competing interests. S.B. declares no direct conflict of interest related to this article. He discloses that he has in the last three years acted as an author, consultant, or lecturer for Medice and Roche. He receives royalties for textbooks and diagnostic tools from Hogrefe, Kohlhammer, UTB and Liber. S.B. is a partner in NeuroSupportSolutions International AB., (Copyright: © 2024 Arora et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Cannabinoid receptor subtype 2 (CB2R) is emerging as a pivotal biomarker to identify the first steps of inflammation-based diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. There is an urgent need to find specific probes that may result in green and safe alternatives to the commonly used radiative technologies, to deepen the knowledge of the CB2R pathways impacting the onset of the above-mentioned pathologies. Therefore, based on one of the CB2R pharmacophores, we developed a class of fluorescent N -adamantyl-1-alkyl-4-oxo-1,4-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxamide derivatives spanning from the green to the near-infrared (NIR) regions of the light spectrum. Among the synthesized fluorescent ligands, the green-emitting compound 55 exhibited a favorable binding profile (strong CB2R affinity and high selectivity). Notably, this ligand demonstrated versatility as its use was validated in different experimental settings such as flow cytometry saturation, competitive fluorescence assays, and in vitro microglia cells mimicking inflammation states where CB2R are overexpressed.

Genetic variants affecting Heterogeneous Nuclear Ribonucleoprotein U (HNRNPU) have been identified in several neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). HNRNPU is widely expressed in the human brain and shows the highest postnatal expression in the cerebellum. Recent studies have investigated the role of HNRNPU in cerebral cortical development, but the effects of HNRNPU deficiency on cerebellar development remain unknown. Here, we describe the molecular and cellular outcomes of HNRNPU locus deficiency during in vitro neural differentiation of patient-derived and isogenic neuroepithelial stem cells with a hindbrain profile. We demonstrate that HNRNPU deficiency leads to chromatin remodeling of A/B compartments, and transcriptional rewiring, partly by impacting exon inclusion during mRNA processing. Genomic regions affected by the chromatin restructuring and host genes of exon usage differences show a strong enrichment for genes implicated in epilepsies, intellectual disability, and autism. Lastly, we show that at the cellular level HNRNPU downregulation leads to an increased fraction of neural progenitors in the maturing neuronal population. We conclude that the HNRNPU locus is involved in delayed commitment of neural progenitors to differentiate in cell types with hindbrain profile., Competing Interests: Competing interests M.B. is a full-time employee of Bayer AG, Germany. S.B. declares no direct conflict of interest related to this article. He discloses that he has, in the last 3 years, acted as an author, consultant, or lecturer for Medice and Roche. He receives royalties for textbooks and diagnostic tools from Hogrefe, and Liber. S.B. is shareholder in SB Education/Psychological Consulting AB and NeuroSupportSolutions International AB. The other authors have no conflicts to declare., (© 2023. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.)

Research continues to identify genetic variation, environmental exposures, and their mixtures underlying different diseases and conditions. There is a need for screening methods to understand the molecular outcomes of such factors. Here, we investigate a highly efficient and multiplexable, fractional factorial experimental design (FFED) to study six environmental factors (lead, valproic acid, bisphenol A, ethanol, fluoxetine hydrochloride and zinc deficiency) and four human induced pluripotent stem cell line derived differentiating human neural progenitors. We showcase the FFED coupled with RNA-sequencing to identify the effects of low-grade exposures to these environmental factors and analyse the results in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We performed this after 5-day exposures on differentiating human neural progenitors accompanied by a layered analytical approach and detected several convergent and divergent, gene and pathway level responses. We revealed significant upregulation of pathways related to synaptic function and lipid metabolism following lead and fluoxetine exposure, respectively. Moreover, fluoxetine exposure elevated several fatty acids when validated using mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Our study demonstrates that the FFED can be used for multiplexed transcriptomic analyses to detect relevant pathway-level changes in human neural development caused by low-grade environmental risk factors. Future studies will require multiple cell lines with different genetic backgrounds for characterising the effects of environmental exposures in ASD., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: Circular RNA (circRNA) molecules, generated through non-canonical back-splicing of exon-exon junctions, have recently been implicated in diverse biological functions including transcriptional regulation and modulation of protein interactions. CircRNAs are emerging as a key component of the complex neural transcriptome implicated in brain development. However, the specific expression patterns and functions of circRNAs in human neuronal differentiation have not been explored., Results: Using total RNA sequencing analysis, we identified expressed circRNAs during the differentiation of human neuroepithelial stem (NES) cells into developing neurons and discovered that many circRNAs originated from host genes associated with synaptic function. Interestingly, when assessing population data, exons giving rise to circRNAs in our dataset had a higher frequency of genetic variants. Additionally, screening for RNA-binding protein sites identified enrichment of Splicing Factor Proline and Glutamine Rich (SFPQ) motifs in increased circRNAs, several of which were reduced by SFPQ knockdown and enriched in SFPQ ribonucleoprotein complexes., Conclusions: Our study provides an in-depth characterisation of circRNAs in a human neuronal differentiation model and highlights SFPQ as both a regulator and binding partner of circRNAs elevated during neuronal maturation., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Several studies highlighted the importance of platelets in the tumor microenvironment due to their ability to interact with other cell types such as leukocytes, endothelial, stromal and cancer cells. Platelets can influence tumor development and metastasis formation through several processes consisting of the secretion of growth factors and cytokines and/or via direct interaction with cancer cells and endothelium. Patients with visceral obesity (VO) are susceptible to pro-thrombotic and pro-inflammatory states and to development of cancer, especially colon cancer. These findings provide us with the impetus to analyze the role of platelets isolated from VO patients in tumor growth and progression with the aim to explore a possible link between platelet activation, obesity and colon cancer. Here, using xenograft colon cancer models, we prove that platelets from patients with visceral obesity are able to strongly promote colon cancer growth. Then, sequencing platelet miRNome, we identify miR-19a as the highest expressed miRNA in obese subjects and prove that miR-19a is induced in colon cancer. Last, administration of miR-19a per se in the xenograft colon cancer model is able to promote colon cancer growth. We thus elect platelets with their specific miRNA abundance as important factors in the tumor promoting microenvironment of patients with visceral obesity., (© 2022. The Author(s).)