Folia Pharmacologica Japonica最新文献

Elucidating the neural mechanisms governing changes in individual animal behavior is a key goal in neuroscience. Such research has important implications for behavioral pharmacology and could lead to the development of treatments for psychiatric and neurological disorders. Given that the brain likely represents vast amounts of information through the combined activity of multiple neurons, studying these mechanisms requires the simultaneous recording of many neurons. Recent years have seen significant advancements in techniques for multi-cellular activity recording. Calcium imaging utilizing fluorescent sensors has emerged as a powerful method, enabling the concurrent acquisition of spatial arrangements and temporal activity changes in neuronal populations. This article focuses on deep brain imaging using GRIN lenses, particularly deep brain calcium imaging in freely behaving animals with miniaturized head-mounted microscopes. We compare the strengths and limitations of this approach to other calcium imaging methods, electrophysiological techniques, and fiber photometry. Finally, we discuss future developments in this field, including two-photon microscopy for imaging beyond cell bodies, membrane potential imaging using voltage sensors, and single-cell resolution manipulation of neural activity by integrating spatial light modulators and electrically tunable lenses.

The prevalence of allergic rhinitis (AR) reached 49.2% in 2019. In particular, the prevalence of Japanese cedar (JC) pollinosis is 38.8%, and the onset age of pollinosis is becoming younger. AR is known to be a risk factor for the development of allergic asthma, a potentially life-threatening condition. Allergen immunotherapy (AIT) is a well-documented, safe, effective treatment option for respiratory allergic disease. It has been demonstrated that AIT can provide relief from clinical symptoms and that AIT has the potential to provide long-term post-treatment effect. Unlike pharmacotherapy, AIT addresses the basic immunological mechanisms that are responsible for the development and persistence of allergic conditions. Currently, two main routes of AIT administration, subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT) and sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT), are commonly available. In Japan, house dust mite (HDM) SLIT tablets have been available since 2015, and JC SLIT tablet had been approved by 2018 without any age limitation. The randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trials that included pediatric patients have been conducted in Japan. In phase II/III trail with JC SLIT tablets, treatment effect-size (improvement of clinical symptoms compared to placebo) was 46.3% after three years treatment. In addition, AR was improved in 40% (1 year) and 30% (2 years) after discontinuation of SLIT. Several future initiatives including the AIT against cedar pollen allergies were announced by Japanese government. This review covered the findings to date, including immunotherapy not only for JC pollinosis- but also for HDM-induced perennial AR.

We are living in an era in which AI technology has become widely available and accessible to many people. The field of drug discovery is no exception, and many pharmaceutical companies have actually begun to utilize AI technology in drug discovery research. In the field of image analysis, which is our main business, AI technology is also advancing and being applied to drug discovery research. In this era of "democratization of AI", what is the role of AI vendors including our company? What is needed for drug discovery researchers to use the technology correctly and appropriately in their research, and for more researchers to benefit from the technology than ever before? We would like to share with you what we have been doing so far and what we will do in the future for "true democratization of AI", including examples of applications of image analysis AI technology to drug discovery research.

Chemokines are a group of cytokines which are involved in the migration of immune cells as well as other cell types such as endothelial cells. These molecules normally regulate the homeostasis in our body's immune system. Furthermore, it has been reported that chemokines mediate the onset and progression of various diseases including allergic diseases, autoimmune diseases, and cancers through the recruitment of immune cells to inflammatory sites. Glioblastoma is one of the primary brain tumors with a significantly poor prognosis. Similarly to other tumors, it has been observed that various immune cells infiltrate into the brain tumor tissues. However, the details of the mechanisms remain unclear. At present, cancer immunotherapy is vigorously researched, and is proved to be effective for many cancers. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy has not yet been shown in glioblastoma. Chemokine is thought to be one of the important factors for cancer immunotherapy. Therefore, understanding the role of chemokines in glioblastoma is considered to be beneficial for the development of cancer immunotherapy. In this review, we overview the role of chemokines and these receptors in glioblastoma.