Recovery of plant amines with carboxylic ion-exchange substrates and their subsequent analysis by thin-layer chromatography

Pathogenic Mechanisms and Therapy Development for C9orf72 Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Frontotemporal Dementia

In 2011, a hexanucleotide repeat expansion in the first intron of the C9orf72 gene was identified as the most common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The proposed disease mechanisms include loss of C9orf72 function and gain of toxicity from the bidirectionally transcribed repeat-containing RNAs. Over the last few years, substantial progress has been made to determine the contribution of loss and gain of function in disease pathogenesis. The extensive body of molecular, cellular, animal, and human neuropathological studies is conflicted, but the predominance of evidence favors gain of toxicity as the main pathogenic mechanism for C9orf72 repeat expansions. Alterations in several downstream cellular functions, such as nucleocytoplasmic transport and autophagy, are implicated. Exciting progress has also been made in therapy development targeting this mutation, such as by antisense oligonucleotide therapies targeting sense transcripts and small molecules targeting nucleocytoplasmic transport, and these are now in phase 1 clinical trials.

Detection and identification of amines in bacterial vaginosis

For the purpose of determining an objective indicator of bacterial vaginosis (BV), we tried to detect and to identify amines in the vaginal fluid of patients by using the dansyl method (to detect amine in a solution of water). Bacteria isolated from these patients were also analyzed. 1) In BV (n: 32) 7 kinds of amines were detected; and the positive rate of detection of the dansyl method was 90.6%. No specific bacteria was found in BV. 2) The positive rate was 80.0% for the patients with trichomonas vaginitis (n: 5). 3) The positive rate of detection was 20.0% in the candida group (n: 5), and 28.6% in the control group (n: 14). Those amines detected in other than BV-related vaginitis are presumed not to vaporize. For purposes of diagnosis, it would be better to detect vaporized amines instead of detecting amines dissolved in vaginal fluid.