2-Deoxy-d-glucose Promotes Buforin IIb-Induced Cytotoxicity in Prostate Cancer DU145 Cells and Xenograft Tumors

Inhibition of the glycolytic pathway is a critical strategy in anticancer therapy because of the role of aerobic glycolysis in cancer cells. The glycolytic inhibitor 2-Deoxy-d-glucose (2-DG) has shown potential in combination with other anticancer agents. Buforin IIb is an effective antimicrobial peptide (AMP) with broad-spectrum anticancer activity and selectivity. The efficacy of combination treatment with 2-DG and buforin IIb in prostate cancer remains unknown. Here, we tested the efficacy of buforin IIb as a mitochondria-targeting AMP in the androgen-independent human prostate cancer cell line DU145. Combining 2-DG with buforin IIb had a synergistic toxic effect on DU145 cells and mouse xenograft tumors. Combination treatment with 2-DG and buforin IIb caused stronger proliferation inhibition, greater G1 cell cycle arrest, and higher apoptosis than either treatment alone. Combination treatment dramatically decreased L-lactate production and intracellular ATP levels, indicating severe inhibition of glycolysis and ATP production. Flow cytometry and confocal laser scanning microscopy results indicate that 2-DG may increase buforin IIb uptake by DU145 cells, thereby increasing the mitochondria-targeting capacity of buforin IIb. This may partly explain the effect of combination treatment on enhancing buforin IIb-induced apoptosis. Consistently, 2-DG increased mitochondrial dysfunction and upregulated Bax/Bcl-2, promoting cytochrome c release to initiate procaspase 3 cleavage induced by buforin IIb. These results suggest that 2-DG sensitizes prostate cancer DU145 cells to buforin IIb. Moreover, combination treatment caused minimal hemolysis and cytotoxicity to normal WPMY-1 cells. Collectively, the current study demonstrates that dual targeting of glycolysis and mitochondria by 2-DG and buforin IIb may be an effective anticancer strategy for the treatment of some advanced prostate cancer.     

From D-glucose to biologically potent L-hexose derivatives: synthesis of alpha-L-iduronidase fluorogenic detector and the disaccharide moieties of bleomycin A2 and heparan sulfate

A novel and convenient route for the synthesis of biologically potent and rare L-hexose derivatives from D-glucose is described. Conversion of diacetone-alpha-D-glucose (14) into 1,2:3,5-di-O-isopropylidene-beta-L-idofuranose (19) was efficiently carried out in two steps. Orthogonal isopropylidene rearrangement of compound 19 led to 1,2:5,6-di-O-isopropylidene-beta-L-idofuranose (27), which underwent regioselective epimerization at the C3 position to give the L-talo- and 3-functionalized L-idofuranosyl derivatives. Hydrolysis of compound 19 under acidic conditions furnished 1,6-anhydro-beta-L-idopyranose (35) in excellent yield, which was successfully transformed into the corresponding L-allo, L-altro, L-gulo, and L-ido derivatives via regioselective benzylation, benzoylation, triflation and nucleophilic substitution as the key steps. Applications of these 1,6-anhydro-beta-L-hexopyranoses as valuable building blocks to the syntheses of 4-methylcoumarin-7-yl-alpha-L-iduronic acid and the disaccharide moieties of bleomycin A(2) as well as heparan sulfate are highlighted.     

Probing metabolic alterations in breast cancer in response to molecular inhibitors with Raman spectroscopy and validated with mass spectrometry

Rapid and accurate response to targeted therapies is critical to differentiate tumors that are resistant to treatment early in the regimen. In this work, we demonstrate a rapid, noninvasive, and label-free approach to evaluate treatment response to molecular inhibitors in breast cancer (BC) cells with Raman spectroscopy (RS). Metabolic reprogramming in BC was probed with RS and multivariate analysis was applied to classify the cells into responsive or nonresponsive groups as a function of drug dosage, drug type, and cell type. Metabolites identified with RS were then validated with mass spectrometry (MS). We treated triple-negative BC cells with Trametinib, an inhibitor of the extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway. Changes measured with both RS and MS corresponding to membrane phospholipids, amino acids, lipids and fatty acids indicated that these BC cells were responsive to treatment. Comparatively, minimal metabolic changes were observed post-treatment with Alpelisib, an inhibitor of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, indicating treatment resistance. These findings were corroborated with cell viability assay and immunoblotting. We also showed estrogen receptor-positive MCF-7 cells were nonresponsive to Trametinib with minimal metabolic and viability changes. Our findings support that oncometabolites identified with RS will ultimately enable rapid drug screening in patients ensuring patients receive the most effective treatment at the earliest time point.

Rapid and accurate response to targeted therapies is critical to differentiate tumors that are resistant to treatment early in the regimen.     

计算金属间化合物热力学性质的新方法

用一简单的相关函数式对金属间化合物的热力学性质进行拟合，提出了一种计算金属间化合物热力学性质的新方法，并用此方法计算了二元金属间化合物的常温热容和熵。计算结果表明，该方法简单，且能满足一定的计算精度，有一定的实用价值。     

A 3-D noninterpenetrating diamondoid network of a decanuclear copper(I) complex

The solvothermal reaction of CuCl(2).2H(2)O with pyridine-4-thiol and ethanol yielded a novel photoluminescent 3-D polymeric complex with an interesting decorated diamondoid network that is constructed of decanuclear copper(I) cluster units and mu(4)-Cl ligands. The in situ generation of CuSO(4).5H(2)O implies the spontaneous occurrence of desulfurization and redox reactions in the present system.     

α''-取代磺酰基-α,β-不饱和酮的不对称催化环加成反应的研究

在手性金属钛配合物催化剂存在下，研究了α′－取代磺酰基－α，β－不饱和酮的不对称催化环加成反应；讨论了α，β－不饱和酮各种取代磺酰基对反应活性和对映选择性的影响；高收率地合成了高光学纯度的环加成产物，并对环加成产物的构型进行了鉴定。     

镓改性ZSM-5沸石中镓活性中心的形成与表征

采用脉冲微反体系研究了经不同程度还原和不同镓含量的GaZSM-5沸石的芳构化性能与吡啶吸附红外光谱特征谱带吸收度的关联，证实了1458 cm~(-1)吸收带的用于表征与Ga物种有关的活性中心，并研究了沸石的硅铝比对Ga中心形成和Ga的价态对芳构化性能的影响。结果表明，对Ga含量相同的样品来说，硅铝比愈低，起始Ga中心生成量愈多，高价态与低价态的Ga中心对丙烷芳构化反应都有促进作用。     

BonDNet: a graph neural network for the prediction of bond dissociation energies for charged molecules

A broad collection of technologies, including e.g. drug metabolism, biofuel combustion, photochemical decontamination of water, and interfacial passivation in energy production/storage systems rely on chemical processes that involve bond-breaking molecular reactions. In this context, a fundamental thermodynamic property of interest is the bond dissociation energy (BDE) which measures the strength of a chemical bond. Fast and accurate prediction of BDEs for arbitrary molecules would lay the groundwork for data-driven projections of complex reaction cascades and hence a deeper understanding of these critical chemical processes and, ultimately, how to reverse design them. In this paper, we propose a chemically inspired graph neural network machine learning model, BonDNet, for the rapid and accurate prediction of BDEs. BonDNet maps the difference between the molecular representations of the reactants and products to the reaction BDE. Because of the use of this difference representation and the introduction of global features, including molecular charge, it is the first machine learning model capable of predicting both homolytic and heterolytic BDEs for molecules of any charge. To test the model, we have constructed a dataset of both homolytic and heterolytic BDEs for neutral and charged (−1 and +1) molecules. BonDNet achieves a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.022 eV for unseen test data, significantly below chemical accuracy (0.043 eV). Besides the ability to handle complex bond dissociation reactions that no previous model could consider, BonDNet distinguishes itself even in only predicting homolytic BDEs for neutral molecules; it achieves an MAE of 0.020 eV on the PubChem BDE dataset, a 20% improvement over the previous best performing model. We gain additional insight into the model''s predictions by analyzing the patterns in the features representing the molecules and the bond dissociation reactions, which are qualitatively consistent with chemical rules and intuition. BonDNet is just one application of our general approach to representing and learning chemical reactivity, and it could be easily extended to the prediction of other reaction properties in the future.

Prediction of bond dissociation energies for charged molecules with a graph neural network enabled by global molecular features and reaction difference features between products and reactants.     

Synthesis and Mesogenic Properties of Liquid Crystals Containing Terminal Cyclohexylmethanol,Cyclopentylmethanol, Cyclobutylmethanol and Cyclopropylmethanol Moiety

Four series of compounds 11?50 containing terminal alicyclic rings such as cyclohexylmethyl, cyclopentylmethyl, cyclobutylmethyl, and cyclopropylmethyl rings were synthesized and their liquid crystal behavior studied. The ring size and the length of flexible alkoxy chain influence the phase formation in different ways. While the smaller ring and the shorter alkoxy chain tend to favor the formation of the N phase, the larger ring and the longer alkoxy chain tend to favor the formation of the SmC phase. All the compounds except 11 and 21 exhibit SmA phases. The widest temperature range of the N, SmA, and SmC phases are found in the compounds 41 , 46 , and 20 , respectively, which are 75 °C for 41 , 115 °C for 46 , and 100 °C for 20 .     

Decontamination of radioactive cesium from natural NaCl by amide-type open-chain crown ethers

An attempt has been made to develop a radiochemical methodology for the decontamination of a trace amount of radioactive cesium from a bulk amount of natural NaCl by liquid-liquid extraction (LLX). Open chain crown ethers, of amide type, namely, N,N,N",N"-tetraphenyl-3,6-dioxaoctanediamide (TDD), N,N,N",N"-tetraphenyl-3,6,9-trioxaundecanediamide and N,N"-dinaphthyl-N,N"-diphenyl-3,6-dioxaoctanediamide (DDD) have been chosen for this purpose. The separation factor between Cs and Na is the highest when 10^-4M TDD dissolved in nitrobenzene is used as extractant and 0.4M picric acid at pH 5.0 is used as aqueous phase. About 60% Cs is extracted in this condition in a single run.