Modern antiviral biomedical cell products and their applications for COVID-19 therapy

Abstract

Several types of COVID-19 vaccines have been developed in a short period of time. However, the groups at risk of severe COVID-19 (the elderly, people with suppressed immunity, such as oncological patients, or organ transplantation patients) are the least likely to develop an adequate immune response to vaccination. Therefore, in order to obtain protective reactions in these groups, it is advisable to use such biomedical cell products (BMCP) as dendritic cell (DC) based vaccines loaded with SARS-CoV-2 antigens ex vivo under optimal conditions. In some cases, when vaccination has not been carried out in a timely manner and the risk of a serious disease is high, it is worth-while to take immediate measures to protect the body from the virus that has infected the organism.For this protective action lymphocytes with chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) may be suitable. Such receptors recognize antigens using modified antibody domains, without need for presentation within molecules of major histocompatibility complex. Therefore, it is possible to use donor effector CAR lymphocytes, which were prepared in advance, for emergency needs. CAR lymphocytes are currently used primarily for tumor therapy. Until 2020, there was limited research on antiviral CAR lymphocytes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic intensification of such activities. DCs, which are considered to be the most effective antigen-presenting cells, were also originally used as anti-tumor vaccines. The safety of DC vaccines, their high effectiveness in the presentation of target antigens quickly led researchers to try using DCs also as a therapeutic agent for chronic viral diseases such as hepatitis B and C, human immunodeficiecy virus.This review summarizes the data on antiviral BMCPs that have been developed so far, with a particular focus on products against COVID-19. It discusses how the results of previous studies can be used to increase the efficiency of anti-COVID-19 BMCP.