Animals
Five-week-old male C57BL/6J mice were obtained from Japan SLC, Inc.
(Shizuoka, Japan) to remove the effects of the estrous cycle in female
mice. The species, age, and sex were selected based on a previous study
(Matsumoto et al., 2013). All animals were acclimated to the laboratory
environment for one week and were confirmed to be healthy prior to the
experiments. The mice were housed in barrier facilities and bred at a
room temperature of 23 ± 2 °C with 50 ± 10% humidity, on a 12-h
light/dark cycle with ventilation. All experimental protocols were
reviewed and approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of the
Pharmaceutical Research Laboratory of the Ube Corporation (Yamaguchi,
Japan). Approval No. is P-18175. Animal studies were conducted in
compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines (Percie du Sert et al., 2020) and
the recommendations of the British Journal of Pharmacology(Lilley et al., 2020).