Combination of minimal residual disease on day 15 and copy number alterations results in BCR-ABL1-negative pediatric B-ALL: A powerful tool for prediction of induction failure.

The current genomic abnormalities provide prognostic value in pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). Furthermore, Copy Number Alteration (CNA) has recently been used to improve the genetic risk stratification of patients. This study aimed to evaluate CNA profiles in BCR-ABL1-negative pediatric B-ALL patients and correlate the data with Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) results after induction therapy. We examined 82 bone marrow samples from pediatric BCR-ABL1-negative B-ALL using the MLPA method for the most common CNAs, including IKZF1, CDKN2A/B, PAX5, RB1, BTG1, ETV6, EBF1, JAK2, and PAR1 region. Subsequently, patients were followed-up by multiparameter Flow Cytometry for MRD (MFC-MRD) assessment on days 15 and 33 after induction. Data showed that 58.5 % of patients carried at least one gene deletion, whereas 41.7 % of them carried more than one gene deletion simultaneously. The most frequent gene deletions were CDKN2A/B, ETV6, and IKZF1 (30.5 %, 14.6 %, and 14.6 %, respectively), while the PAR1 region showed predominantly duplication (30.5 %). CDKN2A/B and IKZF1 were related to positive MRD results on day 15 (p = 0.003 and p = 0.007, respectively). The simultaneous presence of more than one deletion was significantly associated with high induction failure (p = 0.001). Also, according to the CNA profile criteria, the CNA with poor risk (CNA-PR) profile was statistically associated with older age and positive MRD results on day 15 (p = 0.014 and p = 0.013, respectively). According to our results, the combined use of CNAs with MRD results on day 15 can predict induction failure and be helpful in ameliorating B-ALL risk stratification and treatment approaches.

Long Non-Coding RNA Signatures in Lymphopoiesis and Lymphoid Malignancies.

Lymphoid cells play a critical role in the immune system, which includes three subgroups of T, B, and NK cells. Recognition of the complexity of the human genetics transcriptome in lymphopoiesis has revolutionized our understanding of the regulatory potential of RNA in normal lymphopoiesis and lymphoid malignancies. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a class of RNA molecules greater than 200 nucleotides in length. LncRNAs have recently attracted much attention due to their critical roles in various biological processes, including gene regulation, chromatin organization, and cell cycle control. LncRNAs can also be used for cell differentiation and cell fate, as their expression patterns are often specific to particular cell types or developmental stages. Additionally, lncRNAs have been implicated in lymphoid differentiation, such as regulating T-cell and B-cell development, and their expression has been linked to immune-associated diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma. In addition, lncRNAs have been investigated as potential biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic response to disease management. In this review, we provide an overview of the current knowledge about the regulatory role of lncRNAs in physiopathology processes during normal lymphopoiesis and lymphoid leukemia.

Mesenchymal stem cell-based therapy as a new therapeutic approach for acute inflammation.

Acute inflammatory diseases such as acute colitis, kidney injury, liver failure, lung injury, myocardial infarction, pancreatitis, septic shock, and spinal cord injury are significant causes of death worldwide. Despite advances in the understanding of its pathophysiology, there are many restrictions in the treatment of these diseases, and new therapeutic approaches are required. Mesenchymal stem cell-based therapy due to immunomodulatory and regenerative properties is a promising candidate for acute inflammatory disease management. Based on preclinical results, mesenchymal stem cells and their-derived secretome improved immunological and clinical parameters. Furthermore, many clinical trials of acute kidney, liver, lung, myocardial, and spinal cord injury have yielded promising results. In this review, we try to provide a comprehensive view of mesenchymal stem cell-based therapy in acute inflammatory diseases as a new treatment approach.

COVID-19 immunotherapy: Treatment based on the immune cell-mediated approaches.

Multiple efforts are currently underway to control and treat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide. Despite all efforts, the virus that emerged in Wuhan city has rapidly spread globally and led to a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) due to the lack of approved antiviral therapy. Nevertheless, SARS-CoV-2 has had a significant influence on the evolution of cellular therapeutic approaches. Adoptive immune cell therapy is innovative and offers either promising prophylactic or therapy for patients with moderate-to-severe COVID-19. This approach is aimed at developing safety and providing secure and effective therapy in combination with standard therapy for all COVID-19 infected individuals. Based on the effective results of previous studies on both inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, various immune cell therapies against COVID-19 have been reviewed and discussed. It must be considered that the application of cell therapy for treatment and to eliminate infected respiratory cells could result in excessive inflammation, so this treatment must be used in combination with other treatments, despite its many beneficial efforts.

SARS-Cov-2 and COVID-19, Basic and Clinical Aspects of the Human Pandemic: A Review.

In the last two decades, we have witnessed three major epidemics of the coronavirus human disease namely, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, and more recently an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Iran, a country of nearly 84 million, in the Middle East, severely involved with the COVID-19 disease. A documented multidimensional approach to COVID-19 disease is therefore mandatory to provide a well-balanced platform for the concerned medical community in our county and beyond. In this review, we highlight the disease status in Iran and attempt to provide a multilateral view of the fundamental and clinical aspects of the disease including the clinical features of the confirmed cases, virology, pathogenesis, epidemiology, and laboratory methods needed for diagnosis.

COVID-19: Significance of antibodies.

The newly emerged severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has recently caused pandemic Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19). Considering the serious medical, economic and social consequences of this pandemic and the lack of definite medication and vaccine it is necessary to describe natural immune responses to the SARS-CoV-2 in order to exploit them for treating the patients and monitoring the general population. Moreover, detecting the most immunogenic antigens of the virus is fundamental for designing effective vaccines. Antibodies being valuable for diagnostic therapeutic and protective purposes are suitable to be addressed in this context. Herein, we have summarized the findings of serological investigations and the outcomes of neutralizing antibodies administration in COVID-19 patients.

Adoptive Treg cell-based immunotherapy: Frontier therapeutic aspects in rheumatoid arthritis.

The major current focus on treating rheumatoid arthritis is to put an end to long-term treatments and instead, specifically block widespread immunosuppression by developing antigen-specific tolerance, while also permitting an intact immune response toward other antigens to occur. There have been promising preclinical findings regarding adoptive Treg cells immunotherapy with a critically responsible function in the prevention of autoimmunity, tissue repair and regeneration, which make them an attractive candidate to develop effective therapeutic approaches to achieve this interesting concept in many human immune-mediated diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Ex vivo or invivo manipulation protocols are not only utilized to correct Treg cells defect, but also to benefit from their specific immunosuppressive properties by identifying specific antigens that are expressed in the inflamedjoint. The methods able to address these deficiencies can be considered as a target for immunity interventions to restore appropriate immune function.

Gene therapy in rheumatoid arthritis: Strategies to select therapeutic genes.

Significant advances have been achieved in recent years to ameliorate rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in animal models using gene therapy approaches rather than biological treatments. Although biological agents serve as antirheumatic drugs with suppressing proinflammatory cytokine activities, they are usually accompanied by systemic immune suppression resulting from continuous or high systemic dose injections of biological agents. Therefore, gene transfer approaches have opened an interesting perspective to deliver one or multiple genes in a target-specific or inducible manner for the sustained intra-articular expression of therapeutic products. Accordingly, many studies have focused on gene transferring methods in animal models by using one of the available approaches. In this study, the important strategies used to select effective genes for RA gene therapy have been outlined. Given the work done in this field, the future looks bright for gene therapy as a new method in the clinical treatment of autoimmune diseases such as RA, and by ongoing efforts in this field, we hope to achieve feasible, safe, and effective treatment methods.

Collagen II-primed Foxp3 Transduced T Cells Ameliorate Collagen-induced Arthritis in Rats: The Effect of Antigenic Priming on T Regulatory Cell Function.

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a major role in the prevention of autoimmune diseases. Transfer of Foxp3 gene into conventional T cells converts their phenotype to regulatory T cells. Therefore, the question arises as to whether adoptively transferred in vitro differentiated Treg cells specific for a locally expressed antigen might have better inhibitory effects on the progression of the disease as compared with antigen-nonspecific T reg cells. Herein, we investigated the therapeutic potential of primed and unprimed retrovirus mediated Foxp3-overexpression T cells following intravenously injected of these cells into affected rats with collagen-induced arthritis (CIA), an animal model of rheumatoid arthritis. Our analyses demonstrate that systemic administration of collagen II primed Foxp3-transduced T cells could markedly ameliorate CIA inflammatory responses at clinical (p<0.0014) and pathological exchanges including cellular infiltration (p=0.002), bone erosion (p=0.0013) and synovial hyperplasia (p=0.002). In contrast, collagen II unprimed Foxp3-transduced T cells like as collagen II primed or unprimed GFP-transduced T cells did not reveal any beneficial effects on arthritis features as compared with untreated group (p>0.05). Therefore, we believe that collagen II primed Foxp3-transduced T cells are interacting locally and systemically with immune cells which reveled with decreasing of T cells infiltration into joints along with specific CII IgG production. Considering the results described here, it appears that the using patients' T cells which previously exposed to specific antigens may have more effective therapeutic advantage in the production of induced regulatory T cells in the treatment of arthritis.

Scrutinizing the Expression and Blockade of Inhibitory Molecules Expressed on T Cells from Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients.

T cell exhaustion is an immunosuppressive mechanism which occurs in chronic viral infections, solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. Exhausted T cell has increased the expression of inhibitory receptors, and functional impairment. In this study, we investigated the expression from some of those inhibitory receptors being Programmed death 1 (PD-1), T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain containing molecules 3 (TIM-3) and CD244 on T cells from Iranian acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. Peripheral blood samples were collected from Iranian newly diagnosed AML patients and flow cytometric analysis was accomplished for cell surface expression of PD-1, TIM-3, and CD244 on T lymphocytes. Functionality and proliferation assay were done in the presence of anti-PD-1 and anti-CD244 blocking antibodies. Immunophenotyping of T cells showed a significant increase of PD-1 and CD244 expression on CD4+ and CD8+ T cells of AML patients. Whereas blockade of PD1 and CD244 increased the proliferation of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes of AML patients but IFN-γ production was not significantly increased. In conclusion, our data indicate that CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from AML patients appeared to be exhausted and blockade of some immune checkpoints can improve the proliferation of those cells.

Immune cells involved in the pathogenesis of ankylosing spondylitis.

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is an inflammatory autoimmune disease. AS is a prototype form of spondyloarthropathies (SpA). The precise etiology of AS has not been fully understood. But Inflammation has a critical role in the pathogenesis of the disease. The immune system by various cells, secreted-mediators and markers manage and regulate the immune responses and inflammation. Every factor which disturbed this regulation and hemostasis can cause chronic inflammation. In this review, we discussed the role of several innate and adaptive immune cells involved in the triggering, initiation, development, and regulation of AS.

In vitro study of HAX1 gene therapy by retro viral transduction as a therapeutic target in severe congenital neutropenia.

Severe congenital neutropenia (SCN) is a primary immunodeficiency disease in which a number of underlying gene defects are responsible for abnormalities in neutrophil development. The HCLS1-associated protein X1 (HAX1) mutation is associated with an autosomal-recessive form of SCN. Considering the potential of gene therapy approaches for the treatment of monogenic disorders, in this study we aimed to develop retroviral vectors expressing coding sequences (CDS) to be used for the removal of the genetic blockade in deficient hematopoietic cells. Following amplification of CDS with primers containing appropriate restriction sites, HAX1 CDS was cloned into an intermediate vector using TA-cloning. The sequence was transferred into a retroviral vector, followed by retroviral packaging in Plat-A cells. To show HAX1 protein expression, HEK293T cells were exposed to 10 multiplicity of infection (MOI) of retroviral particles and HAX1 expression was confirmed in these cells, using indirect intracellular flow cytometry. This vector was applied for in vitro transduction of hematopoietic stem cell with HAX1 mutation; after 11 days, cultured cells were analyzed for CD66acde and CD177 (neutrophil surface markers) expression. Increased neutrophil production in HAX1 viral vector-expressing hematopoietic cells was observed as compared to control vector transduced cells. Hence, according to the results, this type of therapy could be considered a potential treatment protocol for the disease.

Molecular characterization of Cryptosporidium isolates from human and bovine using 18s rRNA gene in Shahriar county of Tehran, Iran.

Cryptosporidiosis is a widespread cause of diarrheal diseases of humans, young calves, and many mammals. Although in recent years molecular investigations on Cryptosporidium have increased, no data are available on Iran in this regard. Two species of Cryptosporidium are known to infect human beings; Cryptosporidium hominis which shows anthroponotic transmission among humans and Cryptosporidium parvum which shows zoonotic transmission between animals and humans. Cryptosporidium oocysts, morphologically identified as C. parvum, were isolated from 24 human and 35 bovine cases in Shahriar (suburb of Tehran, Iran), and genotyped by means of a Nested-polymerase chain reaction/restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of the 18s rRNA gene. The isolates from bovine samples gave zoonotic or 2 genotype (C. parvum), and DNA profiles of human isolates gave two distinct genotypes, namely an anthroponotic or 1 (C. hominis) and zoonotic genotype or 2 (C. parvum).