Platinum-based anticancer drugs cause neurotoxicity. In particular, oxaliplatin produces early-developing, painful, and cold-exacerbated paresthesias. However, the mechanism underlying these bothersome and dose-limiting adverse effects is unknown. We hypothesized that the transient receptor potential ankyrin 1 (TRPA1), a cation channel activated by oxidative stress and cold temperature, contributes to mechanical and cold hypersensitivity caused by oxaliplatin and cisplatin. Oxaliplatin and cisplatin evoked glutathione-sensitive relaxation, mediated by TRPA1 stimulation and the release of calcitonin gene-related peptide from sensory nerve terminals in isolated guinea pig pulmonary arteries. No calcium response was observed in cultured mouse dorsal root ganglion neurons or in naïve Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells exposed to oxaliplatin or cisplatin. However, oxaliplatin, and with lower potency, cisplatin, evoked a glutathione-sensitive calcium response in CHO cells expressing mouse TRPA1. One single administration of oxaliplatin produced mechanical and cold hyperalgesia in rats, an effect selectively abated by the TRPA1 antagonist HC-030031. Oxaliplatin administration caused mechanical and cold allodynia in mice. Both responses were absent in TRPA1-deficient mice. Administration of cisplatin evoked mechanical allodynia, an effect that was reduced in TRPA1-deficient mice. TRPA1 is therefore required for oxaliplatin-evoked mechanical and cold hypersensitivity, and contributes to cisplatin-evoked mechanical allodynia. Channel activation is most likely caused by glutathione-sensitive molecules, including reactive oxygen species and their byproducts, which are generated after tissue exposure to platinum-based drugs from cells surrounding nociceptive nerve terminals.

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A shell particle consists of a solid, nonporous core that is surrounded with a shell of a porous solid having essentially the same physicochemical properties as those of the conventional porous particles used as packing media in chromatography. The diameter of the solid core and the thickness of its shell or the external diameter of the particle characterizes the chromatographic properties of the packing material. The potential advantage of this particle structure would be the shorter average path length experienced by solute molecules during their diffusion across the particles of packing material when they are retained. Compounds having slow pore diffusion would exhibit higher efficiencies on columns packed with shell than with conventional, fully porous particles. Using columns packed with Halo, a new type of porous silica shell particles, we assess the gain achieved with this principle for peptides of moderate molecular weights and for small proteins.

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Developing greener synthetic processes is an inescapable necessity to transform the industrial landscape, mainly in the pharmaceutical sector, into a long-term, sustainable reality. In this context, the renaissance of peptides...

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