Cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide. Therefore, improving cancer therapeutic strategies using novel alternatives is a top priority on the contemporary scientific agenda. An example of such strategies is immunotherapy, which is based on teaching the immune system to recognize, attack, and kill malignant cancer cells. Several types of immunotherapies are currently used to treat cancer, including adoptive cell therapy (ACT). Chimeric Antigen Receptors therapy (CAR therapy) is a kind of ATC where autologous T cells are genetically engineered to express CARs (CAR-T cells) to specifically kill the tumor cells. CAR-T cell therapy is an opportunity to treat patients that have not responded to other first-line cancer treatments. Nowadays, this type of therapy still has many challenges to overcome to be considered as a first-line clinical treatment. This emerging technology is still classified as an advanced therapy from the pharmaceutical point of view, hence, for it to be applied it must firstly meet certain requirements demanded by the authority. For this reason, the aim of this review is to present a global vision of different immunotherapies and focus on CAR-T cell technology analyzing its elements, its history, and its challenges. Furthermore, analyzing the opportunity areas for CAR-T technology to become an affordable treatment modality taking the basic, clinical, and practical aspects into consideration.

The extracellular matrix is fundamental in order to maintain normal function in many organs such as the blood vessels, heart, liver, or bones. When organs fail or experience injury, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine elicit the production of constructs resembling the native extracellular matrix, supporting organ restoration and function. In this regard, is it possible to optimize structural characteristics of nanofiber scaffolds obtained by the electrospinning technique? This study aimed to produce partially degraded collagen (gelatin) nanofiber scaffolds, using the electrospinning technique, with optimized parameters rendering different morphological characteristics of nanofibers, as well as assessing whether the resulting scaffolds are suitable to integrate primary human endothelial progenitor cells, obtained from peripheral blood with further in vitro cell expansion. After different assay conditions, the best nanofiber morphology was obtained with the following electrospinning parameters: 15 kV, 0.06 mL/h, 1000 rpm and 12 cm needle-to-collector distance, yielding an average nanofiber thickness of 333 ± 130 nm. Nanofiber scaffolds rendered through such electrospinning conditions were suitable for the integration and proliferation of human endothelial progenitor cells.

Los coronavirus normalmente tienen hospederos en diversas clases taxonómicas, sin embargo, algunos de ellos tienen la capacidad de ser zoonóticos, causando sintomatología leve, mientras que los virus SARS-CoV y MERS-CoV causan enfermedades más severas, como el síndrome respiratorio del Medio Oriente (MERS) y el síndrome respiratorio agudo severo (SARS) en humanos. El pasado 2019 se reportaron una serie de casos de neumonía sin aparente causa. Al aislarse y conocerse la secuencia del genoma viral de manera oportuna, se determinó que el agente patológico era un nuevo tipo de coronavirus (CoV) que ocasionaba SARS, al cual refirieron como 2019-nCoV o SARS-CoV-2. Al ser un patógeno reciente, en un inicio se desconocía la respuesta del sistema inmunitario, sin embargo, tras diversos análisis y la rápida generación de información científica se han comenzado a conocer los mecanismos involucrados. En esta revisión analizaremos diferentes mecanismos inmunopatológicos involucrados durante la infección por SARS-CoV-2.