BCG Against COVID-19: Old Vaccine for a Novel Virus?
Elsayed Desouky1,2*
1Urology Department, Wexham Park NHS Hospital, Berkshire, UK
2Urology Department, Alexandria Main University Hospital, Alexandria, Egypt
COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 is overwhelming the globe. Epidemiological studies found an association between universal BCG vaccination policies in countries and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19. This review is trying to explain how a 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis could help fight the novel coronavirus. Moreover, it highlights possible impact on urology practice.
View / Download Pdf Advances in Immunotherapy with Chimeric Antigen Receptor Invariant Natural Killer T cells (CAR-iNKT cells); Therapeutic Implications in Multiple Myeloma
Menelaos Papoutselis, Emmanouil Spanoudakis*
Democritus University of Thrace, Medical School, Division of Hematology, Alexandroupolis, Greece
In Multiple Myeloma (MM), a highly CD1d expressing tumor, defects in endogenous invariant Natural Killer T cells (iNKT cells) along with CD1d downregulation through epigenetic silencing in advanced relapses, promotes myeloma immune escape. Especially CD1d expression is totally lost on plasma cells from extramedullary relapses and in myeloma cell lines, showing that downregulation of CD1d on plasma cells happens when they become independent from the bone marrow microenvironment. Myeloma cells aberrantly overexpressed GM3, a glycolipid that promotes osteoclastogenesis and myeloma cell survival. A-galactosyl-ceramide, a glycolipid extracted from a marine sponge, can expand, and manipulate iNKT cell in-vivo but efforts to reverse iNKT cells defect and restore antimyeloma cytotoxicity with this agent, failed. Advanced relapses of MM patients are difficult to treat and today CAR-T cell based immunotherapeutic approaches are evolving with encouraging results. The development of CAR-iNKT cells technology can overcome restrictions of CAR-T cells and confers the ability to attack myeloma cells by two ways; the CAR receptor as long with the invariant TCR receptor in the context of CD1d.
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