Funded by the German Federal Foreign Office
As infection rates decrease, much of Latin America seems to be taking a breather from the onslaught of COVID-19. However access to vaccines is unequal, both within and between individual countries, while vaccine coverage is heterogeneous. Combined with uneven infection rates and the arrival of the highly contagious Delta variant, new epidemiological and policy challenges must be addressed.
In this article, Subbarayan et al. analyze the role of the TMPRSS2 protein, which helps SARS-CoV-2 enter cells, in different types of cancer. They find that tumor cells with high TMPRSS2 levels show increased immune activity but reduced effectiveness of certain immune cells. These changes may affect how cancer patients respond to immunotherapy, especially when infected with COVID-19. The findings suggest new approaches to improve treatment and reduce COVID-19 severity in cancer patients.
In this research, Escalona-Rodríguez and collaborators explore a non-viral strategy to deliver therapeutic genes into human cells. They develop a new molecule that combines a pore-forming protein with a DNA-binding peptide. This system helps release genetic material trapped inside cells, a key challenge in gene therapy. While the molecule succeeds in opening cellular compartments, issues like the formation of large aggregates still need to be addressed to improve gene expression.
In this article, Subbarayan et al. evaluate how the ACE2 receptor, used by SARS-CoV-2 to enter cells, affects immune responses in cancer. The authors find that tumor cells with high levels of ACE2 show increased activation of immune-related genes and molecules. These changes may influence how well cancer patients respond to immunotherapy, especially when infected with COVID-19. The study suggests that targeting the ACE2-related immune pathway could help reduce COVID-19 severity in patients with cancer.
This study, conducted by Dr. Andrés Moreira-Soto, Dr. Jan Felix Drexler (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin) and colleagues, examined how economic and social factors influence the number of COVID-19 tests performed (testing capacity) in 109 countries between 2020 and 2021. They found that socioeconomic and gender inequalities play a critical role in shaping testing capacity, highlighting the need for equitable access to healthcare and targeted public health interventions.
Natural product reisolation is a bottleneck when discovering new bioactive chemical entities from nature. To overcome this issue, multi-informative approaches integrating several layers of data have been applied with promising results. In this study, integration of taxonomy, nontargeted metabolomics, and bioactivity information resulted in the selection of Scytalidium sp. IQ-074 and Diaporthe sp. IQ-053 to isolate new natural products active against hPTP1B1–400 and repurpose others as antibiotics. Strain IQ-074 was selected based on the hypothesis that investigating poorly studied and highly metabolic taxa could lead to the isolation of new chemical entities. A chemical investigation of IQ-074 resulted in the isolation of papyracillic acid A (14), 7-deoxypapyracillic acid A (15a and 15b), and linear polyketides scytalpolyols A–D (16–19). Compound 17 inhibited hPTP1B1–400 with a half-maximal inhibitory concentration of 27.0 ± 1.7 μM. Diaporthe sp. IQ-053 was selected based on its antibacterial properties against pathogenic strains. Its chemical investigation yielded dothiorelones A (20) and I (21), cytosporones B (22) and C (23), pestalotiopsone B (24), and diaporthalasin (25). Compounds 22 and 25 inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis 42R and moderately inhibited the growth of Acinetobacter baumannii A564, a pandrug-resistant bacterium.